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Mythic Rips SOE a New One
GameDailyBiz has a statement by Mythic's head honcho Mark Jacobs. The CEO of Dark Age of Camelot's developer takes great exception to the aforementioned EQII auction site. From the article: "I'm disappointed with the decision from a leader in the MMO industry to go down a path which in the past, has been an anathema to them and remains so to just about every other MMORPG company in the industry. I think that not only supporting the sale of in-game characters, items and currency, but also taking a 'cut' of those sales, is not only a mistake but one of the worst decisions in the history of the MMORPG industry..."
I think that really would be great! I mean, you sell a lot more crack when you fist hand it out for free. Oh, even better: Maybe all the free accounts would have perma-death (unless they can secure in-game means of resurrection) while the paid accounts have a "guardian angel" that auto-resurrects them. Or how about this: a flat-rate direct withdrawl of $5 from your bank account for every time you click "Yes, resurrect my character"? Mark my words, somebody is going to try this, and if they do it right, they will succeed!
If they really use the crack model, they will even let you download the game itself without cost, knowing that sooner or later, you'll find something in the game worth paying for with real money.
But before they do any of this, they need to get the bugs out of the in-game paying system, and maybe that's what this is.
So is this a something we should fear? No way! It will be great!
Well I, for one, think that Mark Jacobs is 100% right.
I don't want to get all nostalgic, but does anyone else in here remember the ancient days of yore when an RPG was played with maps, miniatures, and funny-shaped dice, when the object of the game was to have fun by escaping into fantasy worlds and pretending you're someone else, someone who may be like you or may be as different from you as night and day? We used to make fun of people who got too much into the game mechanics. We called them "roll" players.
I feel sorry for people who have grown up recently and only know of RPG's as computer games. Something important has been lost when the creativity and imagination of a game master was replaced with a computer's unrelenting adherence to game rules and regulations. The goal is no longer to escape and have fun, it is to WIN. Now, players will do anything to have a bigger and better sword than the next guy has, who is trying to have a bigger and better axe than you have.
Don't get me wrong, I like some of the games out there today. I play City of Heroes myself, and I enjoy it a lot, but it's not the same. It's hard to feel very heroic when you have to deal with typical conversations like, "Hey, can you help me with a sewer run? I'm trying to get to level 38 and need to farm some krakens. We don't need to kill the hydra, because I'm only two bubbles away." When I stick solely to roleplaying and completely avoid game-speak, I get accused of being a weirdo and generally avoided. (Disclaimer: Yes, there are exceptions, very few and far between.)
The whole online auction stuff is a wonderful illustration of just how non-RP computer RPG's have become. I have a question for people who participate in such silliness: If you're not going to acquire your goodies by playing the game, why bother playing at all? Why not just stick to Progress Quest and save yourself all of that tedium of having to actually earn stuff?
As for Sony, I guess Mark covered it pretty well. Can't you see that what you're doing is hurting the genre of RPG's more than they already have been? What the hell does buying a sword on "Station Exchange" have to do with role playing? Nothing. In the article, Mark says:
We will gladly 'leave money on the table' to ensure that whether or not you like our games, that they remain as that, games and not an entertainment version of day-trading.
I say hooray for him and for Mythic for not selling out, once and for all making the R in RPG meaningless. As for me, I've never played EverQuest, and now you can count me out for good. Apparently, there's a large market of people out there playing this game who believe owning virtual goodies is more important than role playing, and because of this, it is obviously not a game I would be interested in.
The more I think about this, the more it makes sense for Sony to do it.
Think about it - these games cost ten to fifteen bucks a month. Most people are only willing to pay for one of these a month, the diehard maybe two or three. Thus, only one MMO is being paid for per person per month (and only those willing to pay 10 to fifteen play)... and if one steals everyone's thunder (WoW) then everybody else doesn't even a chance.
However, if you could lower the cost without lowering the quality, more people will have multiple MMOs installed. I'm not just talking about brokering deals (though this has the added benefit of lessening the time a person has to spend in a given MMO to make it worthwhile, which is also good for this purpose) but the inclusion of ads, etc.
Point being, if people can play more than one MMO at a time (and if people like me can use the hours they spend at work to give them a shot of playing at a level close to their friends), this will almost certainly raise the number of MMOs the market can support - and I think competition will certainly improve the product.
The solution to item farming (and generally "endless levelling"), can be something like they did in Guild Wars where:
1. Every area is instanced for the party visiting it, therefore no "kill stealing", "training" or other non-PvP things players can harm others with.
2. There is a level of cap of 20, which can be reached in about 20-30 hours of gaming. What CAN be still upgraded are skills. The idea behind the game is that the winner of the battle won't be the one who played for more time, but rather the person who planned the best skill combination (you can have 8 skills per battle, out of 150~ unlockable) and has the best cooperation with party members.
Since everyone is pretty much the same, stat-wise, there's no reason to sell players. To an extremety, it would be like selling your CounterStrike or Warcraft3 player.
The game is then in a sense a lot like M:TG. It's not about the time you waste "levelling", but rather on how you strategically choose your 8 skills to use (think a 60 card deck) and how you use them. Just like a skilled M:TG player can beat a lower level player with a much weaker deck, simply by playing smarter.
Also, think first person shooters... as you near the end of the game, sure you get better weapons, but generally still use the weaker ones. The game becomes much harder, but you, as the player, can handle it better because you know when to use what.
3. Another reason I think people buy high level items for real cash, is that most MMORPGs have a monthly subscription fee, people think: "instead of paying 30$ for levelling my char for 2 months, i'll just buy one". GuildWars is free other than the initial cost (again, think M:TG).
What is planned tho, are optional expansions, which btw will be balanced with the previous "chapters", but will let you have more variety. Again, think about expansions in M:TG, the new cards are generally balanced like before, but since you have more choises, you can have better skill combinations.
^_^
This kind of interests me, because it parallels the mostly liberal reaction to the war on drugs -- rather than wasting our time and resources tracking down these "outlaws", let's "legalize what they're doing," "regulate what they're doing," and "take our cut of what they're doing." and watch all the related problems goes away.
The nice thing about this situation is that (and, granted the criticism is coming from a competitor, so the mileage may vary,) somebody is standing up and saying "there will be unintended consequences of this, and here's a few of them." Now if only someone would do that on the "legalize drugs" front so we can finalize realize how stupid that idea is, too.
Ed R.Zahurak
You know, oblivion keeps looking better every day.
I think Mythic has missed the ball here and is trying to make up for not doing it first honestly. It's sheer idiocy to think that the "black market", which has an estimated $300-$800 million dollar market, would just dissappear if you said you didn't like it long enough. You could of course, ban accounts, say it's bad, and continue to put forth 40% of your technical force into solving claims of "missing items", "stolen accounts" and "bugged quests"...
OR you could come into the little world I like to call "reality" and eliminate those problems by offering a service that is so automated and straight forward its a money making MACHINE.
Let's look at the alternatives shall we?
40% technical support put toward account/item stealing asshats that don't really tell you what the problem is...or
Put forth minimal effort after initial work (auction site) is up and running and profit...
The ONLY thing that would effectively stop these so called "black market" auctions would be to have NO trading in your game whatsoever and to not allow a credit card to change on the said account unless there was voice and social security number checking.
It was inevitable one way or the other.
micropayment based fantasy games...
Hey, it worked for "Magic: The Gathering"
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