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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.
... 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.
IGE owns it not IGN.
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
As you profess to play MMOs, I'll assume you've read through the Terms of Service(ToS). Unlike a shrink wrap EULA, this is a perfectly binding, legal contract which you are required to follow in order to use the service. One of the common, yet usually unenforced clauses is that you will not resell ingame content as it is property of $MMO_Company, and doing so infringes on their rights.
Now, as for how IGE gets around that is this: They don't actually own any accounts, nor directly employ anyone who sells currency. As I mentioned, they are simply a sell point; a place for people who do farm items/currency to advertise their wares and sell them to turn a buck. The best way to think of them is as a really really big eBay store.
I have no regrets, this is the only path.
My whole life has been "UNLIMITED BLADE WORKS"
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.
Well, lets show a hypothetical situation that will cover who they are what they do and why they're bad.
Let's say that to earn a certain rank in Game X, you have to get a special item Blizzrt's Tail in order to prove your strength and valor, yadda yadda. Obviously, you get this by killing Blizzrt and taking its tail. The problem is that there is only one Blizzrt in the game world at any one time, so it becomes more a test of "waiting your turn" than of strength or valor.
Now, what IGN does is called "farming". They get 30 or 40 players to all stand around in the cave that Blizzrt lives in (where it appears every time its killed, this is its spawn point). Every time Blizzrt appears, they immediately start to kill it, and take the tail for themselves. Over and over, without respect for the other people who need to kill it in order to advance.
But thats ok, if you can't get a sword in edgewise to score a tail for yourself, the IGN crew will be more than happy to sell it to you on ebay for real money, since they seem to have just "stumbled across" a few hundred extra. Now getting that tail isn't about patience or valor, just about shelling out enough dough on an auction site somewhere.
Now whether this is bad or not depends on how much you care. If you say "its just a game" then consider it as frustrating as waiting in line at say... McDonalds. You have 11 kids in front of you, and they think its real cool to keep you from getting your food by ordering a glass of water, getting it, then getting their buddy in 11th place to let them cut in front for another glass. Unless of course you slip them a buck to get to the front of the line.
If I have been able to see further than others, it is because I bought a pair of binoculars.
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!
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.
people with lots of real-world money can achieve in games what normally takes hard-working players a long time to accomplish.
Sad to say, but it sounds just like the real life. Replace "game" by "university" and you get one such example.So basically, people blame IGE for being just one more company servicing the "rich people"? I don't see any difference with what I see everyday in the capitalist world.
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.
Thottbot is a very useful web site containing data about in-game items, quests, monsters, classes, player profiles, skills, etc. in World of Warcraft.
How did they get this data? One of the more popular add-ons for World of Warcraft is called Cosmos. One of the many features of Cosmos is a plugin to Thottbot so that information that your player sees gets uploaded to Thottbot to improve Thottbot's data - if you see monster X at coordinates Y,Z and no one else has, Thottbot now knows that monster X can potentially be there, and what items you can get from killing it.
IGE is a well known online currency and item broker, and many people within the World of Warcraft community are concerned that once IGE and the so-called "Asian Farmers" get a large presence that the in-game economy will be permanently ruined - better equipment for your character will be out of your price range unless you go to an in-game gold broker, paying real money for game money. World of Warcraft is the only MMORPG I've had experience with, but I've heard that activities like this have made some MMORPGs unplayable.
Most people assume that the Thottbot service was benign, but with the news that IGE owns it is somewhat alarming to people. This means that IGE now has information on what a large portion of the characters in game have and get their items and money, which could be used to more effectively farm high-demand items, collect in-game money at a higher rate, etc.
I don't neccessarily see this as the end of the world, but it is a bit of a concern. I'll probably stop using the Cosmos UI enhancements, or at the very least disable the Thottbot data aggregation.
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?
The game makers universally ban this sort of sale:
Some players argue buying in-game items is fine:Thanks for putting on the feedbag. Thanks for going all out. Thanks for showing me your Swiss Army knife.
That's not to say farming won't become a problem and such, but Blizzard also incorporated enough in-game money sinks (buying skills, mounts, etc.) that I think inflation from farmers will be slower to develop in WoW that in other games.
Finally, keep in mind that the ultimate way to stop farming and such is to play on a PvP server -- because if you don't like the farmer, you can round up a group of buddies to put an end to the farmers.
I don't see any difference with what I see everyday in the capitalist world.
And that is exactly why so many are opposed to IGE and other such operations. When you start blurring the line between game and reality, you lose a lot of what makes a virtual world so exciting to begin with. I want to play a game, not log into "DnD sponsored by EBay". IGE, farmers, sweatshops, etc. just suck all the fun out of the experience for me. Particularly when you're talking about an RPG, as most MMOs claim to be, introducing such real-world influences just corrupts the feel of the world. I mean, roleplaying doesn't have to mean using "thee" and "thou" all the time, but it seems to me that at a bare minimum, you would "play the role" of a character within a fantasy world. When that character starts making financial transactions with beings from another dimension, and when the finances of the player have more effect than the actions of the character, it just doesn't appeal to me anymore.
How is that a problem with IGE? It sounds like the game's screwed up if it's possible for 30-40 people to prevent anyone else from getting the item.
If play like that is against the TOS, then the GMs should enforce the TOS. If it isn't against the TOS, then maybe it should be.
If the GMs aren't enforcing the TOS, then maybe people should just stop playing the game.
Sounds to me like this is a problem that the developer should be able to solve, not something that has anything to do with the market for in-game items.
Basically, it sounds like people are actually complaining against in-game griefing, not people selling items outside the game. Selling items outside the game should be OK. In-game griefing should be solved by the GMs in-game. If it isn't, then the players should simply quit playing the game, if the GMs aren't doing their job.
Totally flawed analogy. What IGE does is akin to paying off teachers so they give you good grades, not having the money to go university. Having the money to pay for university is like having the money to pay your subscription fee, you expect a level playing field from that point on.
Sadly, there's no such thing as a level playing field in Universities either. If you're rich and stupid, you can get by in any University. I've seen in in the Ivy League, I've seen it in the Pac10. Does is suck? Of course it does, but the parent poster is right on in his assessment.
Mod me down and I will become more powerful than you can possibly imagine...
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
Totally flawed analogy. What IGE does is akin to paying off teachers so they give you good grades, not having the money to go university. Having the money to pay for university is like having the money to pay your subscription fee, you expect a level playing field from that point on
Obviously you never had to work full time to pay your studies. That is where the analogy is. Some are rich enough to provide few efforts to get the same thing that poorer people cannot afford without huge efforts.
It's also a fact that students who do not have to work while studying are much more successful than the others
I hope you get the picture,
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."
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 think most people would leave McDonalds and goto another establishment that didn't allow that sort of activity. Maybe you should follow my analogy and do the same.
Also you analogy is flawed. It be more like fishing and having people camp a fishing hole. No one is cutting in line(immoral) in the game, they were there before you. Point of the game is gather items and advance, there is no moral obligation for them to allow you a chance to advance.
Also if they didn't sell the items for real money but instead traded the items for other items in the game would you still be complaining? Trading items is perfectly legit in the eyes of the people who run the games.
Is it cheating when I put more money in the arcarde games so I can get extra lives and beat the high score? Is it cheating when I buy some guys oscar award off of them? Is it cheating when I pay extra $50 for the FastPass at amusement park so I don't have to wait in lines? Is it cheating when I pay extra for first class and get to board the plane before other people? Is it cheating when I buy a $500 super softball bat that allows me to hit the ball 30% farther than anyone else? Is it cheating when Ferrari Spends 500% more than other guys in F1 in order to come in first place? Is it cheating when you hire a tutor so you can pass a class? Is it cheating if I donate $25,000 Hollywood bowl allow me to purchase tickets before everyone else and giving me priority parking? Is it cheating when some millionaire buys his way into space while 100s of people try to become astronauts?
Have you ever been to a turkish prison?
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.
- Blizzard made the game & items, and doesn't want them traded for cash. RIAA doesn't want CDs or digital music files resold for cash -- how is the iTunes/ACC after-market sale of songs? Nonexistent because they want the only sale to occur inside their game^H^H^H^H software. You can sell CDs, but would reselling your 'old' ACC songs on eBay bring a lawsuit? (I don't know, but I bet its against the agreement with iTunes, technical issues aside.)
- Some players argue they *own* the in-game items: they paid the fees, did the adventuring, they control the items in all other respects, so its not fair for a company to try and restrict the usage. Are companies arguing that players are 'licensed' to use a magic sword (which would then be 'not fit for any purpose') only in their approved ways?
- If the game is ruined with buying items, can't the producers restrict usage? Wikis have anti-spam and anti-defacement measures like history revisions and higher security accounts. Games should have the same options. Corporations should have the same option: to control content. Or does the particular issue of what content, in what context, related to whom, make all the difference?
None of this is a really important -- its just a game -- but all of it involves producers controlling content in a digital medium, and that is interesting.Thanks for putting on the feedbag. Thanks for going all out. Thanks for showing me your Swiss Army knife.
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
It is a problem only in part with IGE. From what I can tell, IGE is sort of like an item/money/account broker. Where they make their Real Life money from the transfer of In Game items/money/accounts. While IGE has claimed in the past that they don't employ others to retrieve the in game items, they certainly do facilitate the sale of these items no matter how they were obtained. In truth, it's the griefers who are the most noticable effect of the service that IGE provides.
Selling items outside the game should be OK.
I disagree because the world in game is affected directly by the amount of cash a player has outside the game. I see these types of games as closed systems where advancement comes with skill, and time invested.
The real problem I see in WoW:
Although there are a number of money-sinks out there, most of them are one-time deals which means that eventually you burn through them.
And your access to gold seems to increase expodentially as you level, which means that eventually there are going to be a number of bored level 60 players with an entire vault full of gold, 're-rolling' or just leveling up alts and dumping obscene amounts of money out for equipment.
You are right, Blizzard has put in place things that I hope will retard inflation in game, but I wonder if that will actually slow it or just build it up behind a dam that will eventually break.
Right, because a person who spent three straight weeks levelling up and buying virtual gear is far more virtuous than somebody who worked some overtime as an Ambulance driver and used the extra cash to make a game character as good or better than it would have been if he was a jobless loner.
What is really going on is that people are playing different games within the MMO - some are playing the Advancement Game, and for them, people who buy stuff are cheating. But people who are playing the Exploring Game or the Socializing Game only see the advancement as a means to an end - in the case of the latter, it may be a way to keep up with friends.
:)
That's just about the smartest thing I've ever seen anybody say on the subject of farming.
Personally, I tend to play the "roleplaying game."
In EverQuest, I had a character named "Iwalk", who was an even cleric with a very simple ethos:
1. Never run. It's undignified.
2. Never fight. Hurting people is beneath me.
3. Heal people if they want me to.
I played the character up to about level 8 or so (and that took weeks) while strolling leisurely through the forest. Some were amused by my quirky character, and dozens tried to explain to me how I was playing "wrong" because it would take longer for me to "level up" doing what I was doing.
All of my exp came from delivering mail for the bard's guild (a newbie quest which merely involved going from one place to another with "mail"), and from rare people chosing to invite me into their group, in spite of the fact that I told them up front that I would neither fight nor run. (Some of them were stunned when they discovered that I meant it. They would try to "lead" me to some hunting ground or another, only to turn around at the end of their jog and realize that they left me about a half-mile behind.)
I got almost nothing "accomplished" in that vitrual world, but man was it ever fun. I felt a lot like Kwai Chang Caine, walking among the cowboys of the Old West, who can't understand why he doesn't carry a gun or eat meat like regular folks.
In fact, next time I log in to WoW, I think it's about time I bring the character concept back.
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
It's more like buying all the food within a week's journey, and then selling it to people for outrageous prices. This is very immoral.
You're analogue is flawed, because
Actually, as a matter of fact, people do have the moral obligation of taking into account the consequences of their actions have on other people, and to try and minimize any negative effects. People who do not follow this obligation are called psychopaths (which, according to dictionary.com, means "A person with an antisocial personality disorder, manifested in aggressive, perverted, criminal, or amoral behavior without empathy or remorse").
So yes, there is a moral obligation for them to allow you a chance to advance.
Furthermore, don't forget that they aren't just refusing to help you (which would be within their rights to do) - they are actively keeping you from advancing (which you could do just fine without their harassment), unless you pay them a certain amount. This is Mafia tactics.
"Trading items" and "creating an artifical shortage in supply by keeping anyone else from getting to the item just so you can sell it" are a bit different, don't you think ?
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
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.
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.
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.