Slashdot Mirror
Sony Online To Sell Virtual Property
OMG! writes "In an open letter to the community John Smedley, the president of Sony Online Entertainment, announced their new service 'the Station Exchange' which will allow players of Everquest II to trade their items for real live money.
Sony Online is the first major player in the MMORPG genre to embrace commercial trading of in-game items." Commentary available from all the usual suspects, including Wired, the Players, Terra Nova, F13, and Grimwell. This would seem to be a total reversal of the policies of certain other MMOGs.
I jumped out of my chair when I saw this. My inital thoughts:
- This is going to legitimize the activities of companies like IGE.
- I hope it's a unprecendented failure, even though I fear it won't be.
- What's next? SOE selling in-game currency?
At least they have the good sense to do this on new, seperate servers. This is going to have far-reaching consequences, they've essentially broken the "fourth wall" of MMORPGs. First-sign-of-the-apocalypse dept, indeed!
Auto-reply to ACs: "Truly, you have a dizzying intellect."
The makers of Second Life have taken a very unique approach to player rights with in the game.
.This is totally against the grain of most online games where the company owns it all.
In Second life, the content player create, is owned by the player and not the company
Additionally, they have started tying in real currency to the in game currency. I know this not unique, as Project Entropia does the same thing.
I personally hope this is the way games will go--giving ownership of virtual property to the players and allowing them to use it, sell it, convert for real $$$. I find these environments more enjoyable and rewarding that environments like Everquest, where Sony pretty much owns you.
"How much for your woman?"
Actually if you think about it, this is even better than software fees. Need money for the yearly employee bonus? Just make some pretend stuff out of thin air and sell as needed! Who said magic isn't real?
I Am My Own Worst Enemy
The things that go through SOE's collective heads... You know, murder is illegal, and people are still doing it all over. It's clogging up our court systems. How about we just make a state where you can murder whomever you want? We will just charge a special tax so we can make a profit off of it. If it just so happens to be your state that we decide to make murder legal in, it's ok, you can always move. You don't need your friends and family anyways.
Interested in open source engine management for your Subaru?
The buyer will then need to make payment via the credit card on file with the Station Exchange service. Once the Exchange server has completed the transaction with the seller's PayPal account (minus a percentage of the transaction price), the item or character will be transferred to the buyer's game account.
Frankly, I'm surprised more MMO games haven't done something like this already, it seems like a no-brainer to me.
How exactly does one catch a total carp?
but what happens when there is a server crash and I lose some rare object I was going to sell for 50 bucks?
- Preventing people from hacking/gaming the system.
- Making sure it's all skill and not chance.
I'll wager that this is a fiasco. Oops, I mean I suspect it will be. No gambling allowed on Slashdot...Actually, I was trying to be Insightful, not Funny.
people who play everquest for a living can actually play everquest for a living.
Live money?
Is that five pound note moving?
Argh! Get it off me! I can't breathe!
Basically what they are saying is half their time is spent resolving issues from failed transactions so there are support cost savings in putting in an effective forsale/trade system. They won't be selling items themselves, only help facilitate the trade.
Personally I have no trouble with players selling virtual items but I would not support the company doing it. Players should have equal opportunity to get the same items with their monthly fee. But hey, I may be in the minority of people who only want to pay a monthly fee.
"Thanks to the remote control I have the attention span of a gerbil."
By allowing (condoning, actually) this sort of activity, Sony is ensuring that this game dies a slow and lingering death. Gone are the days when all you needed to excel at Everquest was a good internet connection and a complete lack of a life...now you need the cash, too. People with money will be better equipped than people with no money...those with no money will quit in disgust, and those with money will lose interest after they run up against enough other players with enough money to equip themselves well. Fortunately, those who don't want to participate in this mercenary practice will have the option to play on non-Station Exchange servers...that is, until a majority of the players on that server want the server to be a Station Exchange server...in which case you'll have to find another server...sorry.
It seems that Sony is turning on their major client base...risking alienation and mass defection...so why would Sony embraace such a controversial move?
From The Players:
____
~ |rip/\/\aster /\/\onkey
...Poor players will have to work for their virtual items, while some punk kid will spend his paycheck on a +1,000 sword of n00bPower.
It makes sense to me to limit or ban this kind of trading/buying. What's the point of earning money and stats, if you can simply buy them?
My roommate was addicted ("No, I just like it a lot! I swear!") to a MMORPG a few years ago and learned that you could sell your character on eBay. He worked some numbers and figured out that if he kept leveling up at his current rate, then within XX weeks he could get to an attractively high level and acquire enough good items to sell at $XX, and he would effectively get $1 an hour for failing grades, failing relationships, failing sleep patterns, and failing personal hygiene.
Amazingly, he decided not to bother.
Just wait until we find out we are part of some weird RPG run by supreme beings and death happens when the player controlling you rolls a new character. I just hope my player doesn't start randomly selling my stuff off for GodBucks :-|
I Am My Own Worst Enemy
So the rich get to stay on top even in games?
oh what fun that will be, my character can be a penniless student just like in real life.
Be you Admins? nay, we are but lusers!
I didn't RTFA but I'm guessing Sony gets a percentage cut of all items traded on the Station. And even if they don't, it's generating traffic and thus ad revenue.
I mean, WHOA! RIAA! Look at this! Somebody had customers doing illegal things with their property in violation of their license agreement and found a way to make a profit off it instead of sueing their own customers! What a novel friggen concept.
"I have never won a debate with an ignorant person." -Ali ibn Abi Talib
However, I am already buying enough tangible shit from Sony like Michael Jackson & Jessica Simpson CDs without needing to spend any more with you.
At least with the tangible shit, I have something to throw at the cat or at the TV screen when I realise you guys have ripped me off again.
Regards
Blah blah blah
Gentoo Linux - another day, another USE flag.
I wonder how people in the Sudan and Afghanistan would feel about this.... People trading imaginary commodities for enough cash to feed themseves for a more than year. This is very sad and an imbarrasment for the entire species when human life is literally worth less than someone's entertainment . Especailly when that entertainment is derived from a piss poor simulation of realty.
No matter where you go , there you are.
If people want to give real money to buy imaginary items, they should be able to do so. I wouldn't do it, because I don't see what value I would be getting, but if others feel differently, more power to them.
I am surprised that Sony is doing this, though, because they have a tendency to shoot themselves in the foot with propriatery standards and a sometimes control-freakish mentality which makes some of their hardware less desireable than it would otherwise be.
It's almost like someone with a different (non-Sony) mindset approved this decision.
There are two issues with Sony actually doing something like this:
1) They are accepting responsibility for the value of in-game items. This might not seem like a big deal, but god forbid a server rollback takes a big-ticket item out of your inventory. Or worse, balance adjustments devalue rare/valuable items. How many lawsuits can you imagine will come from people who want to be reimbursed for their "virtual" property's market value? To be sure, the items in question are really just bits on a computer. But really, how different is that from most banking done today? Would you like to be told by your bank that your last direct deposit doesn't exist anymore because they needed to rollback their database?
2) Officially putting a value to in-game items gives new incentive to all those gold and item harvesting shops to work extra hard, not only to eat up as much of those resources as possible, but to hoard and control market fluxuations. If you think spawn camping is bad now, imagine when you're competing with people who are doing it for a living! Yes, it's already happening now, but this will just take it to levels untold of before.
Will there be an SEC to make sure collusion doesn't take place between harvesters and GMs who spawn an extra rare or two for a few bucks?
There's no difference between trading virtual items and trading any tangible non-essential item. It's a basic economic process: you trade your hours (in the form of money) for someone else's hours (in the form of game goods).
There's a very good reason why realistic online games evolve this kind of trading. Never heard of people selling low-number Slashdot IDs? It's the same thing... people place a value on the virtual goods because they represent an investment in time that they cannot afford.
The obvious rules for virtual goods apply if these are to be traded usefully: a realistic supply (i.e. you can't resell the same item more than once), recourse against fraud, and a semi-official currency that allows abstract exchange.
No difference selling game goods than trading Dollars on forex.
Sig for sale or rent. One previous user. Inquire within.
You'd think they'd run into inflationary pressures if they essentially printed money.
Poor people at a disadvantage to those with high disposable incomes! I can only hope that life doesn't imitate art or we could end up living in a world where the wealthy have access to the best homes, food, clothing, transport, education and health care! What a nightmarish vision!
Hello and may all the Gods of Everguest Bless Yuo!
I am writing because I know that yuo are a sincer and honest person who will hep out a preson in need.
My Everquest cahacter MINOLLY WEATHERALL was sadly kilt in a server crash leaving behind an account of $70,000,000 SEVENTY MILLION AMERICN DOLLARS with no claimant accessible.
If you wil assist me with your Everquest cahracter to recover this money I wil give you 15% plus expenses
This is a sincer offer and I know I can trust you with this verry sensitiv informations!
--- Attorneys Assisting Citizen-Soldiers & Families -
You have got your signals crossed. Sony is not making any new games of chance. This article is about the new servers which Sony will put into place to regulate a practice which has been going on behind the scenes for many years. That is the sale if virtual items i.e. swords, rings, gold coins, within the game of Everquest II.
So, if virtual swords are worth real money, and if I steal your virtual sword, can I get arrested in the real world? What if I p-kill you? I need a blue pill...
One man's Funny is another man's Offtopic.
I think the future is obvious with this plan. SOE will eventually create items which can only be purchased by real money. (It would not be a drop off any creatures for example). These items would have some significant power and 'wow' factor coolness via animated / high quality graphics. They would most likely make these items no-trade so people couldn't sell / give them away in game (forcing players to buy the item for each of their characters. Imagine being able to buy a Pegasus flying mount which can't be obtained any other way? Or some neat looking undead / skeletal horse mounts)? Eventually, you'll be able to buy NPC's who follow you and assist you in battle. Perhaps buy a castle and an army to support you?
SOE has taken the first steps in this direction and I am sure we'll see unique items for sale in the next 12 months. You can bet that if I thought of this potential cash cow, that people at SOE have thought of it and are counting on it as a source of revenue.
there was just too much money being left on the table for Sony not to get involved with the virtual sale/resale market at some point. It had to happen.
I'm sure that they've spent countless hours with their legal team trying to figure out all of the liability issues. For example, what if EQII suddenly goes bust and Sony shuts down the servers? Everything you just paid real dollars for is now non-existent.
golden tee live (a new version of a popular bar-video-golf game) just recently added some new features including paying-for-virtual-property, such as different club-sets or even boxes of golfballs which you DO lose as you hit them into the water.
My first response to this was, like many, "What the fuck?" Almost every game out there has big glaring clauses in their EULAs that specifically state the buying and selling of in-game items is forbidden. But effectively what they're trying to do here is "legalize" it, probably hoping it will become less and less of a black/grey market.
Will it completely put a stop to selling on eBay? Probably not. But for the casual player who can't powergame to get an awesome piece of loot, maybe spending 10 bucks on the Sony Exchange intead of spending 15 bucks worth of online time trying to get it is a good deal.
I also think that if I could pick a single developer out there to try this, especially if it ends up failing miserably at the cost of developer $$$ and reputation (such as it is), I would rather Sony be the ones to give it a go.
"I'm a leaf on the wind. Watch how I soar."
-Hoban Washburn
One of the great things about online games has always been that if you are black, white, poor, or rich, you all start the game with equal footing and have equal chance at success.
Not any more. Once again, the old money will reign and trod on the up-and-coming, or the hobbyist player.
Hey, wait a minute. That means eventually the vast majority of people playing will be those who have been economically filtered to the top; those who have, and are willing to pay, lots of money for games. And Sony will have their names, addresses, and the ability to advertise directly to them.
Wow. Sony is fucking brilliant.
---
Students, children, those in countries of economic hardship, don't whine. Your computer COMES with solitaire. For free!
Smed says that 40% of their customer service calls are related to fraudulent in-game transactions. Sony could make this disappear instantly by creating an escrow system in-game. You have a sword to sell, you take it to the EQ Escrow storefront and drop it off. The buyer picks up the sword and the credits are automatically deducted from his account. No chance for fraud.
This isn't going to legitimize IGE, this is going to put them out of business, once Sony gets rolling with this.
Race: TOTAL CARP
Class: Ethereal Ninja
S: 12
I: 4
W: 2
D: 11
C: 17
CHR: 2
AC: 10 -1 (wants to be caught)
HP: 340
HD: 18+15
#ATT: 0 (defenseless)
Special: Spreads Influence into Corporate Culture
The dangers of knowledge trigger emotional distress in human beings.
They aren't creating or removing itemry or gold or characters: They're facilitating the migration of said gold, items, or characters from one character/account to another, then handling the money transaction and taking a nice little cut while they do it... That's all it is. You get a guarantee from the people that maintain the databases that you WILL get your phat lewt that you just paid 50 bucks for.
In gunbound you can buy "gold" for $$$.
And yeah, whats so bad about it? You can invest either lots of time or money for the same result.
And yeah, some people would rather spend 20$ than 5hours of grinding...
HI O WISE PRINCE. WHT TOOK U SO DAM LONG?
Sounds very similar to that thing Microsoft was hinting at for Xbox 2, with mini-transactions or some idea like that. Personally, bad idea. The reason people play video games is so they can pretend they are not in their everyday lives. They are in worlds where you can make it yourself. So this will effect this. A lot. Why bring your monetary class into a game? I mean, a spoiled little 9 year old could buy ubar weapons and stuff, while somebody who has more skill is behind him.
A wise man once said, "wtf h4x."
To those objecting to exchanging virtual goods for real money, please explain how money is any more "real" than the objects in this game. Money is just a concept; those pieces of paper don't have any intrinsic worth. Hell, even an amount of gold isn't instrinsically "worth" anything, except the price put on it by those who might wish to acquire it.
As for the objections that Sony can create new virtual goods from thin air - isn't this what Microsoft does every time they release a new software package? How is Office "real"?
Regarding the complaint that this system will favour the rich, isn't this already the case in that rich people can afford better PCs - ie: the advantage conferred in FPSs by higher frame rates.
And finally, to those worried about cheating or viruses, or crashes or whatever; since the vast majority of "real" money only exists electronically these days, the exact same issues are faced by banks, and they seem to do OK. It can be done right.
It's going to be interesting to see how this turns out. I wonder if they're going to have to make use of the same tools as in the "real" economy, such as controls of the interest rate and so forth.
I swear, the typical Slashdot reader goes by the Fox News esq over dramatization given by /. and don't even read the article.
If nothing else, this might expand the market. Other MMORPG's have been based 100% on real life cash. Sony is offering players the option of playing on servers where items can be bought and sold for cash. I would think that this, in combination with PVP (that Sony is planning to introduce soon), could totally change the market. Think of clan warfare when (potentially) money is on the line?
Personally, I will continue to play on a server that does not allow this because I like to work for my gear. What next, though? Gamblers getting addicted to EQ?
Wise men say, "Forgiveness is divine, but never pay full price for late pizza."
I. I think it's funny that in the past there has been great opposition to this. And only now after Microsoft announced that it would be a major offering throughout many Xbox 2 Live! games does SONY seem to alter their position on this.
II. I am just waiting for some "virtual nation" to have their GNP exceed that of real nations. "In the news today, the virtual nation of "Eschboxia Livia" has exceeded the GNP of Poland. Much question has arose since their recent purchase of an entire island in the Bahamas as to whether Eschboxia can in deed be called a virtual nation any longer.
it is no longer a game - games are ment to be fun!
Between 10 and 20 years ago I was into "pen and dice" role playing games big time. As the pre-cursor to MMORPGs, it was great fun escaping from the real life of mortgages & work to go have a few beers with some friends and pretending to be an elf for a while - I even miss RPGs occasionally today.
They were pleasant hours because of pure escapism and entertainment, nothing more. Yes, it was great going up a level as a character, killing a huge beast or solving a big mystery but part of the fun was also dying occasionally or making some huge mistake that made you and your character look like an idiot.
However, one thing that would have ruined it would have been to have a games master who was open to bribery - e.g. "Here's a ten pound note, make sure I get that +5 Vorpal Blade, okay?" It didn't happen and had it happened, the fun element would have dissipated quickly purely because the real world of money and bribery would have begun to influence that fantasy world in our heads.
One reason I never play MMORPGs is because while I believe most people play them for fun, just like our pen and dice games, a small rogue element in every game takes it far too seriously. These are people who need attention and power before escapism and fun, perhaps mirroring what they are like in real life. Thus real life (again!) creeps into a fantasy universe.
Now, Sony is proposing that yet more of "real life" creeps in because, all of a sudden, how much disposable income you have in real life influences how well you will do in EQ. Suddenly, escapism is not so much of an escape...
The real problem here is that it will ruin the escape for the people who do enjoy the fun of it (again, the majority). It's sad, but those people who have to seek attention and power now have a mechanism to buy that.
In my day, we called it "cheating" and all it does is start to destroy the fun of those players who genuinely play purely for to escape from the real world.
This will destroy Everquest, no question about it, because the people that make that universe fun will feel cheated and robbed and will no doubt find another MMORPG to go and play instead.
But quite frankly, if the cheats can make Sony richer in the short term, what do Sony really care?
Gentoo Linux - another day, another USE flag.
This will highly increase the value of rare items and people who have addictive personalities will play games where there is a chance of getting that rare item that now not only makes your toon more uber, it is worth a bunch of real life coin. Smart idea imo.
"But quite frankly, if the cheats can make Sony richer in the short term, what do Sony really care?" Exactly. They need to make the money back that they spent developing this game. It clearly isn't doing that, AND they're losing customers to the competition. Sony has written this game off. It's no longer a long-term venture for them. It's the MMO maker equivalent of "selling off".
-Randy
I see all these comments about how this is going to cause everyone to quit EQ II and how the rich will have the best equipment and blah, blah, blah... I used to buy and sell EQ gear for real money all the time and if you actually play the game you learn that the best gear in game can not be bought. They make the truly awesome gear that you get from raiding uber mobs NO DROP. This means that it cannot be traded, sold and etc... The key to getting great gear in a game like this is getting into a good guild and taking on the big mobs in the big zones. Of course spending time getting your character up in levels and experience is important too, but I don't think Sony will allow that on their sales site because you wouldn't be selling an item. They will probably disallow the powerleveling services that charge X amount to play your character for you and get levels. In any case unless EQ II has changed their item drops drastically I would have to say that this won't hurt the game at all. (It will hurt the kids who burn their paychecks on some goofy piece of virtual kit though. Sigh there goes that college fund.)
News Reporters Make Tasty Polar Bear Treats!
This isn't going to legitimize IGE, this is going to put them out of business, once Sony gets rolling with this.
Quite true. Obviously, no 3rd-party seller of in-game resources can survive being undercut by the system administrators, who can accomplish the equivalent of MONTHS of gil-farming with a single command-line.
However, although the short-term effect may seem beneficial, I've always thought that the legitimized (or merely widespread) sale of in-game items would hasten the collapse of any typical MMORPG. This seems to be a desparation move by SOE, whose EQ2 project has been eclipsed by WoW anyhow.
My thesis is that MMORPGs provide a substantial amount of their entertainment in the same way casino gambling does: the players' victories and rewards are quite arbitrarily handed out by the operators, but the cold-blooded arithmetic is hidden behind a screen of glamour and fun. Expose the honest real-dollars cost of an activity to the player, and they'll flee to a more fantastical game.
If a slot machine has a sign on it that each 10 minutes of play loses an average of $2.85, few people will enjoy pulling the lever.
If level 60 epic flame-armor has a "Buy Now" hyperlink which costs $14.31, few people will find it fun to camp a dragon every 3 hours hoping he drops one more of the pieces.
Basic psychological principles: addiction can best be sustained if the game gives out rewards unpredictably. Game items are valued more because it was hard to know when they'd appear. Putting a blatant dollar-sign on the items is the ultimate form of predictabilty. The virtual Skinner box falls apart. When the mystique is gone, the players will be too.
PS. The Economist magazine agrees with my prediction, although the article isn't posted for nonsubscriber online reading.
Every time a comment like the parent is posted, somehow it gets modded up as insightful and gathers a bunch of flames before smarter people mod it down properly.
/. has "smarter" (that is, people who agree with you) people to mod comments down that you don't like. Perhaps we should give you and your friends full-time mod status so you can enlighten us with you all-encompassing knowledge of everything.
Its a good thing
If you're pissed about moderation, there is something called meta-moderation. Perhaps you might do that sometime.
Any online game or experience is ultimately what you, the player, makes of the game. The impact of third parties (other players) upon you is limited by how wide you define your boundaries.
/. predict. As the article mentions, exchange servers will not be the default, but merely an option for those who wish to step over into something new.
If you play the game for your own enjoyment, with your friends or otherwise, and come across a player who is playing the game for some financial motivation, why not just take satisfaction in knowing that you are enjoying yourself, and he is likely forcing himself into his predicament.
However, in the long term, this won't impact the overall experience as much as the doomsayers of
I myself play World of Warcraft, and have been playing online games for a decade in the form of MUD's and MMORPG's but I am excited about a new legitamite dynamic to an already popular game.
Give it a chance before dooming it to mediocrity.
Sony isn't selling items. You buy items from other characters.
Most players play for fun.
With those two in mind, it makes sense that buying/selling would not be too central to the game. You can still use EQ $$ to buy other in game stuff, and most players don't have the real cash to buy themselves to victory. Buying/selling w/ USD (or the Euro, or whatever.) won't necessarily dominate most players lives.
BUT:
There are going to be people who go NUTS over this. You all know the type, it's the player who is convinced that his success in the game is the justification of his otherwise completely unjustifiable high opinion of himself. That guy is going to center his life around getting real money out of EQ, and he stands a pretty good chance of ruining this for everyone.
put more coherently:
Since you have to buy from other players, there shouldn't be an overabundance of high end items for sale. (if you get something cool, you want to use it.) BUT some people are just asses, and this will only give them one more excuse and one more outlet. They will ruin it, not by buying their way to victory, but by (insert unfair way that jerks can acquire high end items) in order to sell them for real $$.
If I play a card game with you and you got up to go to the bathroom, you could lay your entire hand down face up on the table and I'd never look. The whole game is an artifical structure with artificial value and balance and it only "works" if you adhere to the rules. Cheating defeats the whole purpose. However, I have some little cousins of various ages that are the exact opposite. The game is about the win or the top and the ends justify the means. The first thing they do with ANY new game is google for cheat codes.
I simply can't explain it. It makes me personally ill to witness. But I wouldn't be surprised if you and I are severly outnumbered by kids more than willing to run up mom and dad's credit card for a level 50 uber warrior. Then again, you can no longer use red pens to mark up errors on tests in school because it stresses out the kids, so I'm not sure I understand or agree with anything relating to the pussy children we're raising anymore.
Now where's my cane and Metamucil?
I'm Rick James with mod points biatch!
Between 10 and 20 years ago I was into "pen and dice" role playing games big time. As the pre-cursor to MMORPGs, it was great fun escaping from the real life of mortgages & work to go have a few beers with some friends and pretending to be an elf for a while - I even miss RPGs occasionally today.
Your analogy immediately starts out flawed. You had small games with a few friends, not massive worlds full of complete strangers. To be parity, you would've had to allow anybody to play, you would've had to have had a cover charge, and you would've had to have played the rules fairly with all participants.
However, one thing that would have ruined it would have been to have a games master who was open to bribery - e.g. "Here's a ten pound note, make sure I get that +5 Vorpal Blade, okay?" It didn't happen and had it happened, the fun element would have dissipated quickly purely because the real world of money and bribery would have begun to influence that fantasy world in our heads.
An economy is not bribery. If there is a fair way to get a VB+5, the fact that there is a market for it in a foreign currency in no way impacts the game. By all accounts this is not Sony devaluing game items by flipping a few critical bits. Instead, the game is generating the same resources it always did, allowing the same trading as it always did, and the only difference is that in addition to all the hundreds of other reasons you have to make a trade, they've introduced another currency that some people value more, but apparently some people value less, than online resources.
This will destroy Everquest, no question about it, because the people that make that universe fun will feel cheated and robbed and will no doubt find another MMORPG to go and play instead.
That makes zero sense, because the game isn't changing. If people are leaving, it just means they game was never any fun, and they should have left a long time ago if that were true. To me, such a move makes the game more interesting because it makes it more complex. If I were a player, I'd look forward to taking items from newbie players with more money than sense, and it's just icing on the cake that I might again be able to sell it back to them, too!
From the article:
To be clear, all we are doing is facilitating these transactions. We are NOT in the business of selling virtual goods ourselves.
End-quote.
Sony are providing an exchange, exactly like Ebay.
Sig for sale or rent. One previous user. Inquire within.
Quite true. Obviously, no 3rd-party seller of in-game resources can survive being undercut by the system administrators, who can accomplish the equivalent of MONTHS of gil-farming with a single command-line.
If I understand it correctly, Sony isn't actually selling the items or gold directly. Nothing is created in the transaction. They are just giving people a way to safely do their business.
In other words, IGE should still be able to make money from farming. Now they just have to compete with (or just use) Sony's marketplace, which may effect their profits.
I disagree. Both traditional RPGs and MMORPGs in an ideal world provide complete escapism and entertainment. In theory, an AD&D game could host a huge number of players, it's the rules and mechanics that simply restrict a GM for only "running" a game practically for a handful of people.
It could be argued that a computer performs precisely the same task in an MMORPG that a GM does in an RPG - i.e. define the game universe & ensure the players live within that universe's rules. It's just capable of doing that for a lot more players :-)
To be parity, you would've had to allow anybody to play, you would've had to have had a cover charge, and you would've had to have played the rules fairly with all participants.
Any players - We frequently did allow anyone to play with the realms of a gaming club with over 40 people in it.
Cover charge - just about every player I ever met invested money in one or more rulebooks that at least allowed character generation. This might equate to a cover charge that demonstrates some commitment to wanting to play.
Fair rules - Surely an unfair GM would soon find his/her games less popular if bias was shown towards particular players. Sure, I've seen it happen but as an ex-GM also, bias does detract from your fun as the moderator also.
An economy is not bribery. If there is a fair way to get a VB+5, the fact that there is a market for it in a foreign currency in no way impacts the game.
Of course it impacts! Imagine as a player in a fantasy world I have amassed enough wealth to own, say, a castle because I happen to be an experienced player? It doesn't mean that in real life I might not have a job, a good credit rating or even anywhere permanent to live.
Real-life wealth will allow new players to skip the system of the fantasy world that experienced players have worked hard to live within in order to make their characters successful.
What happens to the players' perception of the game world if, all of a sudden, the rules are changed on them in a way it couldn't possibly happen? The answer is, it shatters the illusion and the game ends.
they've introduced another currency that some people value more, but apparently some people value less, than online resources.
They've introduced a "currency" that makes your abilities as a player in the game universe completely meaningless - if you have more real-life disposable income, you can progress as a character within the game without having any game-playing skills.
If I was an experienced player who invested time and effort in creating a character through good gameplay only to find some upstart with a big bank balance has progressed quicker than me, I would be most angry! In just the same way as when I find out a player in Quake on the Internet is using a game cheat - no difference!
If people are leaving, it just means they game was never any fun, and they should have left a long time ago if that were true.
Rubbish! Many years ago, a friend of mine wrote and ran games within an AD&D world he created. We played in it for over a year, on and off, until we suddenly realised how linear his game and GM-ing had been. In other words, we, as players, had little influence over what was happening in his game world no matter what we did. The whole game died there and then.
Yes, we'd thoroughly enjoyed it for a year until we got to that realisation of linearity - it shattered the game world for us just like this will do to EQ now.
To me, such a move makes the game more interesting because it makes it more complex.
Then you've lost the point - the players and their interractions with each other determine the complexity of the game, not the rules.
No GM or MMORPG designer can create rules and scenarios fo
Gentoo Linux - another day, another USE flag.