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Price Comparison Shopping in MMORPG
Mike writes "Whether you love it, hate it or are unaware of it the MMORPG secondary market, which deals with the trade of in-game commodities for real world cash, is here and growing. Some researchers suggest that this secondary market is likely to exceed the primary market (which is created by off-the-shelf game purchases and subscriptions)in years to come. But with so many vendors how do you know who to buy from, or even who your options are? Eye On MOGS is a search-engine come comparison/availability tool for the MMORPG secondary market. It was created by gamers, for gamers and as such we are very sensitive to the needs of those players who use the secondary market and the concerns of those who oppose it. " Not meant to be an advertisement - but I think it's a very telling sign when even the secondary market for games can have its own price compare engine.
you try froogle.com?
for a minute there, i lost myself...
Now I cant complain about a nonresponsive server.. :/
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... was it worth it?
__
Rich My Way
Most MMORPG makers include a clause in their EULA prohibiting the sale of in-game items or coin for real-world money, since they own the IP. Thus far, smaller scale operations have gotten around this by claiming that they're just selling their time, but it wouldn't be very hard at all for the software makers to adjust their agreements to specifically prohibit even that, and begin cracking down on the sellers. Not that this would stop the smaller time operations, but it would be hard to build a large and successful business on this model without being shut down. Out-of-game markets are bad for the in-game economy, so it would make sense for the software makers to want to crack down. Or at least take a piece of the action.
can u do this with Guild Wars as well? :D
Viable Slashdot alternatives: https://pipedot.org/ and http://soylentnews.org/
Now I can finally say that I've read ALL of TFA's
See my journal for slashdot ID's by year. Mine created in 2005. http://slashdot.org/journal/289875/slashdot-ids-by-year
Not meant to be an advertistment - but I think it's a very telling sign when even the secondary market for games can have its own price compare engine.
Not meant to be an advertisement? The only link in the story is the dude's name - which goes right to this search engine website.
Well HERE's some links: general Price Comparison Shopping sites: ranked. Also, not meant to be an advertisement.
http://www.eyeonmogs.com/
From a google search: http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en&q=Eye+On+MOGS &btnG=Google+Search&meta=/
There is nothing more practical than a good abstract theory.
Here's an instant cure for homelessness, joblessness, and poverty. Just set some bums up with EQ accounts and have them farm valuable objects all day long, sell them to other people, and they too can now become productive members of the real economy, will no longer need welfare, and will be generating taxable income.
You see? You see? Your stupid minds! Stupid! Stupid!
Before I shop for a good comparasion, I'll have to figure out what the hell one is.
In the virtual world, you buy/do anything that rules allow.
It is as if you are sucked in by the game controller, rather than going in through the phone line.
He who knows best knows how little he knows. - Thomas Jefferson
yes, my virtual car is very cheap to run so its saving me a fortune on gas costs
Do not try to read the dupe, thats impossible. Instead, only try to realize the truth
What truth?
There is no dupe
Sorry but the idea of selling in-game stuff for RL cash is just wrong.
At least to me. It takes away a part of the game where you just play to have fun.
Take a look at Everquest. Go with a party and you wont get the people who think "Wow, I'm going out to have fun with my friends bashing a couple of mean nasties". No you'll get the people who think "I wonder how much dollar I can sell this rare item for..."
It's just taken a turn for greed in games where they encourage or allow people to sell stuff for RL money.
That's why I love EVE-Online so much, not only do CCP (company who runs the game) prohibit ISK (the ingame currency) selling, but they crack down hard on those who sell. But I can actually be evil in this game and loot pillage and plunder, meaning if I find a macro-player I'll just take him down myself...
It's an ultra-capitalistic in-game world where there are no entirely safe-zones. Macro isk-farmers live a dangerous life since "pirates" (a class of players who live outside the in-game law to plunder very much like 17th century pirates) love to go after players who arent watching their client just sitting there macroing away.
Why not a MMORPG interface to real auctions? Some of these MMORPGs have much better interfaces than eBay. I'd love to put pics of my saleable item in my MMORPG store, with all the eBay-style auction features automating most of the auction, but with the 3D realtime interface for answering questions, last-minute haggling... A 3D model of my item could answer many questions about size; people could "borrow" a copy to put into their own model of wherever they're going to put the thing when they buy it. And the virtual world could include a "cancel button" that yanked back a loaned "floor model" from a potential buyer after their loan expires. MMORPGs already include much better chat interfaces than eBay, even VoIP. And a gallery of my "other auctions" and "sold items", as well as feedback and other auction detail, would be much better presented than in the flat, lifeless eBay style.
The best way to get there from here is with an OSS MMORPG. What GPL'ed (or BSD'ed or public domain, whichever OSS license) MMORPG is the most popular right now? One with smooth 3D animations and controls that any normal could use to navigate? A MMORPG network which a developer can join with their own server, which pops up their own domain into the common game map? Which has a simple scripting language to attach properties and behaviors to in-game objects created by players? And which can connect to a RDBMS (like Postgres) for realtime updates to object properties?
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make install -not war
I've paid cash for gold in a couple of games. And each time, it made perfect sense. In most games, gold farming, especially solo at low levels, is rather dull. Skipping a dull part of the game for more interesting parts, even moreso if you've done it before in the same game (and are moving to a new server or playing a new account), doesn't sound crazy to me, nor did it ever turn out to be in practice.
I've also bought an account with a little startup cash and equipment (didn't use the characters) as a secondary account in a game I already had a character in. That made sense too. Cost little more than the box price at the time, and circumvented some dull gameplay.
CCP "prohibits" in game currency sales just as any other MMOG company. That is: it's forbidden by the EULA but everyone does it. Current going rate is about 3 million ISK for a $. A short search on ebay or google will show you hundreds of offers for sale, and since Eve-Online runs on a single server it also cuts down on a lot of the logistics problems that sharded games put on ebayers with having to mantain stocks on different servers.
In fact, it's probably one of the most ebay-plagued games along with Lineage 2 and FF-IX because of its money-intensive PvP. Ironically, especially pirates (who consider resource gathering and trading as a means of income as boring) are among the prime ebayers. There's players who easily spend a few hundred dollars per month on Eve-Online money so they can be a bigshot in game without having to go through the arduous process of grinding money through tradeskills or NPC-hunting.
With the way the American dollar has been trading against most international currencies over the past few years, I don't know why anyone would trade their hard-farmed gold for the monopoly money their employers are paying them.
I've played MMOs since UO and always had a bug up my ass for people who would buy/sell in-game items. But as soon as I started playing WoW the absurdity of NOT buying gold became very clear to me.
From http://igxe.com/ (I recommend them over IGE, they deliver much faster and have much better prices) I can buy 1000 Gold for $62.99. That is enough to buy an "Epic Mount" which is a vital part of End Game PVP. Or I could farm for the gold in game for about 400 hours.
Let's consider this very carefully. Let's say you have a shitty job as a waiter or something and make $10/hr (net). You could work your real job for 6 hours being bored and obtain you Epic Mount, or you could spend 400 hours being bored farming in game.
For me this is a no brainer as my time is much more valuable than $10/hr. This is why I don't make my own shoes either!
You see, people make money when they work, and thus, their time becomes worth a certain amount of money. If they determine for whatever reason that it would be a better use of their money to save them time in the game, and enable them to have something or do something in game, then it can definitely be worth it.
I think the reason people have trouble understanding why it would be worth it is because society in general is still hung up on the Virtual Divide. Lets face it, for a lot of us, the internet is an integrated part of our life. People have already accepted the fact that for some games you pay a subscription fee to play, why can't they accept that some might consider paying even more to get additional value out of a game? In this case value is gained by needing less gametime to have a more fun experience...and isn't the whole point of a game to have a fun experience?
As our world becomes increasingly virtual, I think people will for the most part get over this, but it really comes down to whether the person thinks the money spent will be worth the enjoyment he receives in exchange for it. And to everybody who thinks that is stupid...well, who are you to judge the values of another person?
Buy Steampunk Clothing Online!
Scarcity is arbitrary in a virtual world. Only those things which the software puts fewer of in a database are "scarce." Any search engine which improves the the ability to find the best prices on items which could be infinite in quantity and have zero cost to manufacture seems silly.
...But I digress. TREMBLE PUNY HUMANS!ONE DAY MY SPECIES WILL DESTROY YOU ALL!
I wish I knew his ID on /. I'd add him to my friends... he is quite an extraordinary fellow.
'He was a dreamer, a thinker, a speculative philosopher... or, as his wife would have it, an idiot.' - Douglas Adams
Homos, this is yet another sub-50 post article you've put up. Why don't you go back to playing with your Macintosh and let the adults run the Linux-special-interest site? Just because you're a founder and you hold stock in the company doesn't mean you haven't become an embarassment and an irrelevancy.
A common theme in MMORPGs is that you have to work for what you want. Many pieces of equipment, abilities, spells, titles, and other objects not only advance your character in-game, but also function as a sort of status symbol. Take EQ2 for example; if you see someone with flashy armor and a weapon that has a unique model and particle effect, that character's probably of a very high level. Same deal with horses, except in that case, a low-level twink (someone with a wealthy, high-level character that puchased equipment for his low-level character) can have one, too.
...and given the 3 markets of player-sellable good (below average, average, and twink), well... the twink market has by far the highest margin of profit, so it's practically oversaturated. The other two? Not so much.
...now, the question as to whether or not this constitutes good game design is a whole different issue. But the point is, sometimes, because of the current MMORPG design paradigm, it just makes economic and entratainment sense to buy it off eBay.
The problem is, you get this sort of 4-tier market developing in-game. At any given point, there's equipment that's below average - which no one wants, average equipment - which is usually bland and a bit on the expensive side, but attainable, and twink equipment - usually slightly better than the average equipment, but ridiculously overpriced. The only people who can afford that equipment are either twinks, or someone who's buying their cash off eBay. The final category is quested equipment, which is usually even better than the twink gear at any given level, but takes much more time and effort to get.
So your problem, as a player, is that if you're new(er) to the game, and you want some flashy or high-end equipment, there's a good chance that it's not accessible, or will require significant time and patience to get via a quest model. Quite frankly, a lot of us don't have the time.
So, in my case, I've purchased money in-game before (in both City of Heroes and WoW, during the brief time I've played it). Sometimes, the developers skew too far towards their "work for it" ideal and forget that it's a game that's supposed to be enjoyable. So if you want equipment X, and the only way to get it is either via outlay of cash you couldn't possibly have at the level that gear is designed for, or to spend hours upon hours doing mostly unenjoyable questing for it, does it make sense to buy it? Depends. How much is it?
I make about $25/hour. Now, if I really want equipment X, and it's on eBay for $50, what makes more sense? Spend 6 hours farming/questing for it, or put another two hours in at the office and call it even?
Now, obviously, you can't do this with everything unless you've got a huge chunk of disposable income. But in some cases? It's a lot more convenient for a player to stick to his real-life profession and use the advantages it affords to help him catch up in game.
The only things of value in GW are "unlocking" items on the account for PVP characters. Gold has no purpose in achieving that.
Now if you could buy accounts with everything unlocked that would be worthwhile.
Sure, someone's lazy ass can buy gold off ebay and get all this good gear, or contract power levelling services or whatever. But the fact is that these people won't deserve their gear, and it will be readily apparent when they play. All the time you spend gathering your money and XP is not just empty time. You spend that time gathering experience and insight in to the game itself. When I run into a warrior with very good gear and he has no clue how to properly tank, it's painfully obvious where he/she got his stuff. People who worked for their gear know how to play the game.
The perfect sig is a lot like silence, only louder
I just want to point out the analogy between the purchase items for MMORPGs and the sale of Magic:The Gathering cards (or any CCG). The company sells booster packs of trading cards with a rare card in it and 14 other. If you're lucky, you paid a little less than 5$ for a rare card "worth 20$" (if you manage to sell it, which isn't that hard), but if you're unlucky, you get a rare card priced at around 5$, but for which nobody would pay more than 1$.
The thing is that you basically pay for the fact that rare cards are more "powerful" are harder to find. This rarity is simply something agreed on, because the company decided to make them rare or not to reprint some of them anymore.
Now if I think back about the fun that I had playing M:TG in high school, it was all about meeting new people, trading cards with friends, looking for a special out-of-print card and playing with them for the social prestige. You had rich kids (or normal young adults) buying the rare cards directly, but that was just part of the game. Some adults refused to buy cards, because they knew that it would spoil the fun.
Maybe there is a problem if a MMORPG justifies spending countless hours farming item in some boring way. It's not because you can get to level 99 that you have to invest one year of your real life to do it.
Was this story worth it?
No sig for you!!
Doesn't an article usually point in a direction? ie, where are the links? Like a business card without a number, email or address.
Seriously, wouldn't it benefit everyone if an official "stock exchange" or rather, commodities exchange was created by the games themselves? Take Magic The Gathering Online: I only play it occasionally, and I don't have the time available to be chatting for ages to find out how much a gold/silver card is worth and try to barter it... But I might put it up for "sale" on an official exchange, and bid on other cards that might be available. The same could be done for items in most online games.
Price Comparasion Shopping in MMORPG
Aren't you embarrassed by "comparason"?
Aren't YOU embarrassed by your inability to spell a misspelling?
Argh.
Eye On MOGs It would've been a lot easier if the OP had it in the actual article, but there it is.
This
I've bought stuff in MMOs several times, and each time it was worth it:
The first thing I bought was a Jedi account in Star Wars: Galaxies. I paid $100 for it and turned around and sold it for $1,000 on eBay a month later when I got bored with it. $900 profit and getting to play? Definitely worth it.
I've also bought gold in WoW - 2k gold for $75 bucks from some guy who was leaving the game. That amounts to about an hour at my day job and I avoided the endless boring as hell grind to get an epic mount and had plenty of cash left over to buy equipment.
Just like with most people who buy items/gold/etc, I did it to skip over a boring part so that I could enjoy the fun part.
I've noticed that most of the people who have issues with gold buyers would solve their issues if they just quit caring what other people have.
Since I can't tell them apart, I treat all ACs as the same person.
Anyone who is willing to pay subscription fees and pay substantial sums of money for advantages in a video game needs to have their priorities checked. The fact that there are people making a living selling those advantages is just sad.
I mean, seriously, there are better games than MMORPGs out there. Games that don't require hours upon hours of grinding for experience and/or real money to even get you started playing competitively. Not to mention all the other things you can do with your money.
I have played several MMOs, most notably EQ (played for a few years on and off) and more recently WOW (finally quit after my 3rd level 60, I cannot stand to raid and that is all there is to do at 60). I have never once bought gold and I dislike it when other people do it. I understand why someone would buy virtual currency with real money, but I feel it is unfair to anyone that does not have the IRL money to blow on fake money.
I could afford to buy gold, but I never will. Gold buyers and sellers apparantly do not care about the game one bit when they do this. Buying gold introduces more money into the economy makes all the prices go up. Every MMO suffers from this naturally because people will get one high lvl char, farm some gold for there alternative character, then send them a bunch of gold and items. I have no real problem with this as the player went through the game once the hard way, and as such, deserves to take it easy the next time around. When actual gold farmers that farm to sell get involved they purposely gather gold to sell to other players, and this has a net affect that drives all prices up to a very costly rate that eventually makes it so the honest player has no choice but to do the very long hard drawn out dungeon crawls (once or 5 times isn't so bad, but anymore then 5 times to the same damn place just gets old) until they get the gear they want as opposed to being able to buy items with nearly the same stat bonuses.
All and all buying gold hurts everyone in the end and is especially unfair on the people that are either A) not rich enough to blow more money on a game then they already are, or B) not willing to trade real money for fake money to feel special and important in a virtual universe.
What does that mean? I think the word you wanted was the Latin preposition "cum", not "come."
-Rich
.. Yes, indeed, it is worth it... a little coding skills a little hacking skills and your good on your way creating bots... real cash making robots... instead of running seti or whatever, why not use those idle cycles creating CASH!!!!! Yeeeaaaa buddy ... light weight....
... was it worth it?
The same question can be asked movie goers, or people interested in soccer games.
Was going there to watch worth it?
It's a matter of your tastes and preferences for entertainment.
Why are you so interested in what kind of entertainment people like?
Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
Perhaps you should be embarrassed about your lack of reading comprehension
They are remarkable stories being told about the role playing world. Does it remind you of anything? Consider: there is a source of money outside the system which just allows gold to be created out of nothing. Is there anything like this today in the USA? Then, it no longer pays to farm to get gold, its too slow. And inflation is going so fast, that as soon as you get your gold, it no longer buys anything. So what should you do? Clearly, move into the gold trading business. Does this remind you of anything? Should you perhaps borrow some gold and buy now, before the price of what you want gets away from you? But, what will happen if the supply of purchases into the system suddenly, for whatever reason, dries up? Ah, that's called deflation. And very nasty it is too. A whole generation is getting educated in the nature of, and the causes of, the coming economic disaster. Ironic that it should be happening in parallel to the real one....
Auction sites like IGE offer affiliate programs, allowing gaming web sites to make cash by referring potential buyers. This may become the business model for Eye on MOGs and similar sites. Several sites have offered Everquest info for some time, including EQEcon and EQ Prices, although I gather they're less critical since Sony opened its new "official" auctions at Station Exchange.
RichM
Data Center Knowledge
From a fool and his money....
Puzzle Pirates http://www.puzzlepirates.com/ now allows free play forever on their 'doubloon oceans', and the cool thing is that there is an in-game exchange for players to trade doubloons (the currency you buy with real cash) and pieces of eight (the standard in-game currency). High end items and privileges like being an officer in your crew require doubloons to purchase, but it's better than a recurring subscription.
The really cool thing is that Puzzle Pirates has brought the market for sellers and buyers into the game, and cut ebay and other secondary markets out of the loop.
At first it might seem crooked that someone can roll in and buy US$20 worth of doubloons and then trade some of that for pieces of eight and be "rich" in the game, but it actually all works out. There are people who just want to have fun, maybe can't play very often, and make enough money that $20 is no big deal. Then there are hordes of 13 year olds that have tons of time but no money. The genius of the system is that both sides win: the 13 year olds get to trade their time spent playing (earning pieces of eight) into doubloons and get access to higher-end features, and the older casual players can turn their doubloons into pieces of eight and get the items they want without playing more than they want to.
The doubloon exchange is like a stock market. The offers to buy and sell are displayed and the price is not fixed by Puzzle Pirates, it's all up to the players. It totally works and just goes to show that embracing the market can be a good thing, rather than trying to stop players from doing what they want to do.
Of course, another reason this works is that you don't "level up" in puzzle pirates, so there's no reason to sell a character.
don't panic-- clowns can smell fear.
I feel you. Working every day is dull. If I can manage to pull off a nice bank heist I can get on to more interesting fun parts of life. Hell, lets all do it!
I play FFXI quite a bit, and Real Market Transactions have been around for a while. We had almost a year before it became prevalent, but now it's everywhere. Square-Enix seems to make a passing effort to remove RMTers -- there was one big purge where they did a surprise deletion of a bunch of accounts, not giving them time to move their loot elsewhere. So they just restarted under new names and have gotten back to where they were or past it since.
People argue against RMT in many ways, most of which have already been mentioned: People who buy gil are not as good of players, they haven't "earned" their gear. There are two I haven't seen mentioned yet:
1) Buying gil condones the unsportsmanlike behavior of the RMTs. Most RMTs are brutal in their tactics of obtaining their items. There are a handful of notorious monsters that appear only every few hours, or even up to 24 hours, that on my server, the RMT have monopolized. When the time is ready for them to appear, the RMTs are there, and will bully people out, use the other monsters to try and disrupt other players, stand around and make things difficult, and in some cases, use client hacks to make their chances of getting the claim when the monster spawns higher than the average user. All of these actions are against the Terms of Service of FFXI, but even when reported, Square-Enix does nothing most of the time because they did not witness it.
2) Buying gil reduces the value of that gil. This is a big personal pet peeve of mine, and something that isn't easily measured. Lets say you spent a month farming and earning 1,000,000 gil. You then go to the Auction House and try to buy an item that you've been wanting for a while. That item's last price in the history was 800,000. You try bidding 800,000, and you don't get it. So you bid 810,000 and you don't get it. You try 850,000... and you still don't get it. You realize that if you go up to 900,000, that's another hour or so of work farming for that gil, so you hold off, and hope it will come down in price and you'll try again later.
Now, think of someone who just paid $50 for that 1,000,000 gil. They bid 800,000 and nothing happens. They bid 850,000 and don't get it, then 900,000 and get it. That extra 50,000 to them is only $2.50, so why not? So now, they have the item, but damage has been wrought. Now, the last listing in the history is 900,000, so when the next person comes along who wants to sell that item, they will probably sell it for 900,000 not 800,000.
If you extrapolate that to every single item in the game, you get a horrible inflation effect, which is what has been happening. Granted, there are other factors causing it, but in the last two years, items have gone up in value by factors of ten, sometimes doubling withing the course of days. It makes keeping up very diffucult for someone who doesn't buy gil.
My bottom line: Please don't buy gil/gold/influence/whatever. It's bad, mmmkay?
It's a game; People are paying to be entertained. If the boring parts are so dull that people A)don't play the game or B)find a workaround (I.E. buying stuff on a secondary market) then those people won't play if there is no secondary market. If they don't play, then they don't pay the developers. If there are enough of these people not paying the developers, then... the game ceases to exist as the company goes out of business and can no longer afford to run the server(s). At the very least the secondary market may give the developers enough extra subscribers to pay for developing a couple neat quests or other features.
Comparing this to bank robbery is simply asinine.
Troller, this is yet another sub-0 score post you've put up. Why don't you go back to playing with your Tandy PCjr and let slashdot post whatever the fuck it wants, seeing as how you don't work here, have no say in what happens, and your input is about as valuable as a bottle of dirty water in new orleans.
Just because you visit this website doesn't mean it owes you jack fucking squat, and if a story ends up having sub-50 posts then THATS JUST HOW ITS GONNA BE YOU JEALOUS FUCK.
That's probably not quite the best comparison, but no doubt there are significant problems with gold farming groups. Using WoW as an example:
Ok, it screws with the economy. I don't really see any way around inflation in the game, I don't think that's the biggest problem. As much as it irritates me to see someone buy their way through a game where I have played my way through, their choice I guess. I don't think that gold farming can screw an economy or unbalance game play very much because the best items in the game can't be purchased.
The real problem with gold farming is the people doing the farming will do absolutely anything they can to get gold. This means people are scammed, spammed, harrassed, griefed, etc. Prime example: just recently a trojan hidden in an advertisement (which only affected people still using IE, and unpatched at that) on a popular game-info site allowed hundreds of accounts to be hijacked, stripped down, and more or less ruined. Ruined through not only destroying items a character may have accumulated, but also by ruining a players' reputations. Their actions are malicious and greedy, and certainly not harmless.
I don't care if you're too lazy, don't have enough time, or just plain suck and feel you need to buy gold to compensate. I care that buying the gold screws over people trying to play a game.
For the most part in MTG, it's possible to win tournaments --and even national championships -- with very few or without any of these so-called rares. Most of them aren't overpowerering.
Compare this to an MMO where that axe of butt-whooping is definitely better than the normal axe you picked up at the merchant and you'll lose every time.
Guild wars is much like MTG, with even the most expensive items only giving a player a slight edge, rather than total dominance.
-- Political fascism requires a Fuhrer.
So when will we see the courts applying identity theft laws to hijacks on-line gaming accounts? Some courts have already applied theft laws to virtual property...
You can't miss them... I was searching about stuff in EQ (maps, etc) and those ads ALWAYS pop up! even featured one in google... they must earn well ;)
Computer Games
This should set of alarm bells to game developers. There is a part of the game so unbearably dull that players will pay cold, hard cash to skip it.
hurmmm.. so then you're saying if linux does become more user friendly it will have less than 1% marketshare?
I consider it more like paying for a cheat code.
Oh, good for you, now you've bought a level 60 character and can PK anyone you want. That makes it really fun for the rest of us who are trying to enjoy the game as it was meant to be played.
If you don't like the game, stop playing. Don't drag everyone else's experience down by being that guy who bought a high level character or enough gold for something and then turns around and PKs people he doesn't like just because he can because he was lame enough to pay real money for virtual status.
I don't even use walkthroughs or cheatcodes in single-player games. It would be like living a lie.
You know that guy? Everyone knows one. That guy you know who buys a brand new game and then immediately goes online and copies down all the cheat codes. Then he installs the game and laughs like an idiot as he decimates the computer with 10,000 archers, or unlimited ammo, or whatever else he can get.
Don't you hate that guy?
Now, picture that guy, but willing to pay insane amounts of money to skip past the beginning and middle parts of an online game, and then acts like he's actually earned his right to kill and grief you, even though he doesn't know anything, and hasn't spent the time making friends and fighting monsters.
That's what this is. People who can't tough it out buying their way to the top.
If you cannot play, do not play. Do not pay people for status if you don't enjoy the game.
As long as you don't PK or talk about how neat your character is and avoiding other players, that's fine.
If you're PKing and killing other people's monsters just because you have a lot of gold, then you're cheating, and unfairly making the game less enjoyable for other people.
>I make about $25/hour. Now, if I really want equipment X, and it's on eBay for $50, what makes more sense? Spend 6 hours farming/questing for it, or put another two hours in at the office and call it even?
The catch is that after about 5 more hours of gameplay, that dagger of super-killing is suddenly average equipment for your level. So to remain in gear that slightly better than the average user user, you need to add 2 hours of real work (the fifty dollars) for about every 5 hours of playing. This adds up, obviously.
I learned this by keeping my WoW alt in really nice gear by draining the bank account of my higher up. Its a waste, unless you're going to keep that armor or weapon for a serious amount of time.
Worse, that weapon will help you level even faster, thus making it obselete even quicker. Usually its only worth buying items that are extremely rare, knowing the purchase you've made is permanent and saves you 100 hours of attempts to get some piece of armor off some major mob, but that welcomes the question of why are you even playing these kinds of games? If you dont want to burn 10 hours with a group to kill that major mob then what are you doing?
This kind of thing reminds me of those people with really nice $2,000 guitars who couldnt play themselves out of a wet paper bag, but it does look cool on the wall. Not to insult you, but good game balance should force users to fight and work for their gear. If you dont like this, then don't play these type of RPG games. One of the real allures of these games is the time it takes. To a lot of players its like a rite of passage to have finished some game or to have hit level 50 or whatever. Its also fun to take on challenge. A little help here and there is nice, but opening up the economy completely and buying your way into everything really does contradict the purpose of the game. Unless MMOs are just online equivalants of pissing contests where people can brag, "Oh and I have the stick of beating for my priest!!" Like the $2000 guitar, it looks good, but this is more a collector's mentality than a player's mentality.
MMO Markets is my site that is a quick way to get a sense of the kind of market out there for these games:
World of Warcraft US Gold (WWGU) one hundred gold: $8.96
World of Warcraft EURO Gold (WWGE) one hundred gold: $12.27
EverQuest II Plat (EQ2P) one plat: $10.46
EverQuest Platinum (EQP) 10K pp: $4.52
Final Fantasy XI Gil (FFXIG) one million Gil: $14.87
Lineage II Adena (LN2A) one million Adena: $3.06
Matrix Online Information (MXI) one million Info: $1.37
Star Wars Galaxies Credits (SWGC) one million Credits: $4.36
Guild Wars Gold, America (GWGU) 100k gold: $7.20
Guild Wars Gold, Europe (GWGE) 100k gold: $7.20
Philosophistry
what seems easy and natural to Linux geeks is definitely not what regular people consider easy and natural
I work at a helpdesk. "Regular people" don't consider right-clicking "eays and natural".
Having played Everquest for years (up to a level 66 enchanter / level 56 druid) and WoW pretty much since it came out, I'd have to say that the issue is not that there is a part of the game that is unbearably dull. The truth is that the game really doesn't change much from low to high levels. I personally found the upper level raiding game to be incredibly boring.
I don't think people pay to "skip the boring parts", I think they want a high level, powerful character without really playing the game. And I suspect once they've got that high level character, they don't know what do... probably end up selling it again.
Yeah, but when does skill factor back into playing?
"Give a man a fire, he's warm for a day, set a man on fire, he's warm for life."
the problem is when people play the game and it involves items of status, they WILL care about them. its how they drive the game forward, you want to play to earn more to get better things. So when people short circut this others get annoyed.
Its not a problem of the people. Its a problem of the game design, if the game was genuinely fun to play ALL the way through... so each dungeon/area/quest, and moster/enemy was something they enjoyed finishing off then theyd probably find less of this, as players would be doing these things and earning for themselves.
XML - A clever joke would be here if
Wow...sounds like you have some personal issues you need to work out.
Honestly..."that guy" is my little bro. And it used to be me when I was younger. And while I point out to him that he's not good just because he can cheat...ultimately, if thats what lets him enjoy the game and get what he feels is his money's worth out of it, then more power to him.
We have a finite period of time on this planet, and these people are simply trying to maximize the enjoyment they get in that brief period of time. Yes, some try to hold their power over others to try to compensate for whatever insecurities they have, but others simply don't want to sit there for 40 hrs a week grinding away to "succeed" at a game that can only be fun for them if they have X, Y and Z items.
I'm sure your response is "if you don't want to spend time playing, don't play at all", but that's just your opinion, and fortunately the games don't have rules against this (well, for the most part). If you object to it that strongly, I suggest you keep playing the ones that do have those rules in place.
The casual gamer who pays for power CAN coexist with the powergamers and the casual gamers who can't/won't pay for power, but everybody needs to recognize that everybody is in it for themselves, not you. And honestly, perhaps you should not play the game if you can't handle the fact that someone with more money might be able to do something you can't, although I regret to think what would happen if you opened your eyes and realized how similar reality is to virtual reality.
Buy Steampunk Clothing Online!
In order to "legally" buy and sell EQ2 items, you have to do it on those two servers. This gets SOE their percentage and makes it safer for all parties to complete the transaction. But you can buy and sells items and cash from any server - just find a buyer, run the transaction through paypal, then meet up in game and hand over the goods. I think this idea from SOE is brilliant, and expect to see something similar in most of the next generation of MMOs, since it is a good way to cut down on scammers and what not - if figures out how to dupe plat, SOE can take it out on the seller instead of the buyer by not issuing the cash, but letting the buyer keep the plat. As for wether or not this ruins the game for others, well, I've played both ways . In SWG it used to be just a matter of grinding out exp and within a week you could master any basic profession, and most master professions. Now with the new combat system its a lot more complicated. Buying cash makes it easier to get your hands on certain items which can help you out, but all in all the economy is so broke its not even funny. The only way to fix any game economy is to have some sort of steady drain on players holdings to counteract the ease of getting cash. Player housing tries to do this and fails - after all, if you don't want a house you just don't pay it with no negative effect. Look at real life - you cant just walk into a forest with a knife, whack some squirrels, cut out their eyes, and sell them at safeway for a few bucks. MMO's let you do this, paying out of a never ending supply of money. Hence, you can hire some chinese teenagers to do this 24 hours a day for 50 cents an hour, and then sell the amassed plat for ten times what you paid out. If weapons wore down more, food and water was required, etc. etc. the economy would be stronger, but the game would be that much harder too.
The players that buy in don't really stay that long, it's just a mild interest that they can afford and a buy in is just a particularly weak and pointless pose effort. So to fix MMORPG you have to reintroduce actual player skill so the a weak character controlled by a skilled player can wipe out a strong character controlled by a rich noob. Unfortunately this also tends to drive off a lot of unskilled players who only play at random intervals because they suffer at the hands of skilled players. For a game company there is no real profit in that style of game, they want easy in and an ego driven hook to keep players going. Upon that basis they can't really stop the selling no matter how much they hate it because as far as they are concerned they are the only ones who should be allowed to sell anything.
So if you don't like these faults and are getting really annoyed by them, stop playing, you are not really having any fun any more and you have just been caught on a marketing engineered psycological hook.
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
But they had the right idea.
We need it made clear in law that private currencies are property and thus tradeable. You should be able to trade cell phone minutes, airline tickets, and anything else of value.
Hoo boy does this open up a can of legal (civil and criminal) worms. It is potentially possible that, at some point, these secondary market operators will lose everything they own, and possibly face serious jail time as well (Note, I am not a lawyer, and this is just an observation by a lay person)
Lets start with the obvious. A strong argument could be made that these items are actually securities being sold and traded. SEC might declare them derivatives, for example. The penalties for operating an unlicensed stock market are pretty severe.
Then there is the wonderful little problems you are causing the MMORPG companies themselves. Under Sarbanes Oxley, intellectual property has to be valued and reported (it is part of the assets of the firm).Failure to properly do so has criminal prosecution implications for the CTO's of the company.
The operation of these secondary markets will cause the MMORPG companies a great deal of expense in tracking the value of their properties, expenses they have a legal right to recover from the secondary market operators and anyone they judge as accomplices after or before the fact.
Then, of course, there is always money laundering issues. Are the secondary market operators complying with the various international money laundering reporting laws? There are considerable fines involved.
And of course, there is also the potential for wire fraud.
Finally, the potential for disturbing the money supply is considerable. The Fed Reserve and Greenspan could declare the seocnday market operators a threat to National Security and thus subject to the more onerous provisions ofthe Patriot act and other NS laws. (Not to mention all the central bankers of other countries more vuolnerable to disruption of their monetary system.)
I could go on and on, but the economics and patent law journals have covered these issues in considerable depth, which is why no MMPORG company has ever considered attempting a secondary market, even though they have been quite well aware of the potential for years (It is claimed that Everquest comprises a significant part of the Korean economy, for example).
yeah ?
http://www.npcgaming.com Dedicated Gaming Servers
Why do people mod a copy&paste troll that isn't even on topic up?
I have no problems whatsoever if people want to sit around and play with cheat codes all day. I really don't. That's their business.
What you have to realize is that we're talking about an illegal void-of-warranty. It's as bad as hacking in online FPSs.
Some people think it's a good revenue model. I disagree, but that's their business. I was playing a game called Achaea today, in fact, that lets you pay for in-game currency.
If that's how they're calling it, that's how they're calling it.
They have a set of rules in place, and it's expected of everyone to play by these rules.
To say that it's dumb to not want to aid the chinese sweatshop gold-farmers and to not cheat in an online game is not the fairest statement, in my humble opinion.
When did he ever say he PK's?
He paid for the ability to skip dull content in favor of more entertaining stuff. Not how I'd spend my money... but live & let live, I say.
If the game companies were really smart, they would offer such an option themselves. There's clearly a demand for it.
I thought WoW finally got around the tedium of low-level grinding. There were all these quests and all this fun stuff to do, right at first level! Endless content! Woo-hoo!!!
Then I created my second human character, and discovered that if I wanted to advance my new character, I had to stay pretty much on the same "train track" of quests that my previous human was on. The same trip to Fargodeep mine. The same errands run for the guards. The same wandering around for the fucking soup recipie for the same fucking farmer. The magic was gone.
If I was going to keep playing, would I be tempted to simply buy a character in the race/class combo I wanted who had already completed all those quests I had seen before, so I could move on to newer ones? Hells yeah!
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
"Cheating" is a funny word. I see it thrown around a fair bit when talking about paying for in-game gold, yet few people actually throw the same tantrums when there's no money involved.
The game won't bitch if I send 500g in-game to one of my low level characters and deck them in gear very few people at that low level will have. Yet it's only "cheating" if I give someone $X for doing the same.
You can argue about EULA and whatnot, but it's not the same "cheat" as hacking an online FPS, as you put it. Everything done in-game is perfectly acceptable in-game (in the context of the transaction, don't bother bringing the "harassing chinese farmer" red herring up because it doesn't apply), the only distinction is that you gave someone cash to send you that gold instead of saying "pretty pretty please." If you want to put a FPS analogy, it'd be the same as the company selling the game telling you that you can develop your own aimbot or have a friend code it for you if you want, but don't pay cash for someone else's aimbot program.
---- Take the Space Quiz!
I am not sure about buying, but I can tell you it was worth to sell my house on Ultima Online http://www.uo.com/ for 300$ before closing the account and leaving the game for something else
People don't pay extra money to find out what happens in the end of a film without "grinding" through the film.
Dude,
There is nothing stopping you going and doing the non-human quests to get our lowbie off to a start. There are 3 totally separate areas with separate stories for each level range. You may think 1-10 might be your 'home' area all over again, but you could quite easily go to IF on the tram and start 1-10 in the Dorf area.
Maybe when you have 6 Alliance charaters you can whine about lack of lowbie areas, but again, there's nothing to stop you playin horde for another 6 characters.
I don't need to defend the game, but maybe you are missing a large chunk of the effort put in by the developers in your narrow minded and non-adventurous choice of character.
Dan. -- So what if it's spelt wrong, nobody's perfect
In Soviet Russia Secondary market buys you
I smell a business opportunity.
/me goes to register MovieEndingsforcash.com
Their page says that they are the most comprehensive site on the web...
Click on Second Life. Click on Main Server.
Now, whether you look for all currency or all items it finds 0!
Doesn't sound very comprehensive to me.
http://www.google.com/profiles/malachid
Humans are so inconsistent.
Ahh, but it is not simply a change of hands.
Their motives for acquiring the money were completely out-of-character, real-world based motives of human survival.
That creates a form of "insanity" within the context of the game that does not belong and should not be condoned. Actions in game worlds need to be consistent with the state of the game world alone.
I'd love to see a level 1 human running to Teldrassil just to level. That would deserve respect.
In fact, it's probably one of the most ebay-plagued games along with Lineage 2 and FF-IX because of its money-intensive PvP. Ironically, especially pirates (who consider resource gathering and trading as a means of income as boring) are among the prime ebayers.
Agreed. I'd certainly say it's the game worst hit by people buying in game currency. It has less players, but the impact is devastating, and noting that it's all on one server is a particularly salient point.
As you say, it's because of all costs associated with PvP (which are higher in Eve than any other game). Virtually all the big pirates are at it, it's the only way they can stay in ships and equipment - it's not like they spend time grinding out by asteroids trying to raise cash. These guys don't just buy once in a game either - like a SWG, EQ or WoW player who might do it just to get 'that epic armour set', or 'that really cool mount' - they keep coming back, for more and more cash because it's a pre-requisite for PvP (and EVE is entirely about PvP).
CCP do come down hard on bot users - but that's people using bots gain the advantage in PvP as much to just make money. In EVE it's really easy to make money fast if you manage to get enough together in the first place. CCP do nothing to stop known ISK traders. Absolutely nothing. Trapping them would be trivially simple for them, they have access to all the relevant data (user IP's, the ability to easily trace ISK money laundering via the DB) they just don't care. That's why I don't play Eve any more, it's also why I don't play L2 anymore.
Eve consists of a majority of 'bottom feeders' who play the game, grinding away in a small corporation, getting ganked and muscled out of all the non-NPC faction controlled areas by other corporations and alliances. In order to maintain control of their territory other alliance corporations are compelled to buy ISK themselves, so everyone can keep up with enough battleships, and so the whole system is perverted and the entire Eve Universe is controlled by those players (especially now there are no 'free' areas outside NPC faction controlled space in the centre, since the Coalition of Free Stars alliance was stabbed in the back - all alliances operate Kill On Sight policies).
In principle, Eve has the mechanics for a good game (minus meaningful content). In practice, it's horrible, for the reasons elaborated on above.
What if there were a server that totally skipped any trading whatsoever, so that you owned what you earned in the field, and nothing else? And yes, this implies no crafting of armor and weapons and whatnot, at least unless you were to use it for yourself alone. And what you earned in the field was due to skill, not to an iron-clad ass that can sit still for days on end, and there was no "ninja looting", in that you got a unique set of "drops" from a killed monster, and everyone else got their own random pot.
Wouldn't you make a beeline for that game? Yes you would. Yet it doesn't exist. No one's figured it out, yet.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
The butler did it.
Kirk dies.
Data dies, but in a way where he can be resurrected.
She's a lesbian.
So's she.
Vader is a whiney teenager.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
I purchased the 100 gold for my mount online, $9.95. Was it worth it? Hell yes! Ten bucks or weeks of grinding? I am a casual player, don't want to spend what little time I have to game grinding for gold. I would rather be PvPing.
EXACTLY!! Buying gold is cheating, but twinking isn't?
People will do this regardless of how they got their wealth. You're mashing two different issues together.
Not directly applicable, but Cliff's Notes comes to mind for books.
If somebody kills you in an MMO, it's because they're a higher level than you.
If they get to that higher level through no skill of their own, then they're cheating.
Even if they just camp in monster-infested areas, killing stuff for experience, that's still wasted experience you could have gained had they not killed the monsters you were able to honestly get to without cheating.
Any way you look at it, it's just not a fair way to do things. It's also illegal, and not designed to be in the game, much like aimbots in first person shooters.
The problem is it's so expensive, it takes long hours of grinding to get the money. This repetitive grinding is not fun, and Blizzard has occassionally taken out some of the more lucrative methods of getting this money, extending the grind even longer.
So in this sense, it often makes sense to just buy your gold. You can spend 50 hours grinding , or you can pay $100 bucks and be done with it, and have what you want. By doing it yourself, assuming its something you don't enjoy and that it feels more like work than playing, you're only saving yourself $.50 an hour, as opposed to buying it.
Although this is a different topic altogether, I have to wonder, is Blizzard intentionally driving people to buy gold? I'm normally not a conspiracy theorist, but by having something this expensive to buy in the game, and continually nerfing some more attractive means of making money, it seems weird. I guess the idea behind nerfing the lucrative money making spots is to curb the productivity of those who farm the gold to sell, but it hurts those who farm it for their own needs just as bad, if not worse.
I think they have it half right. The best equipment in the game is generally bind on pickup. That means you have to get it personally for you to be able to use it. You can't just buy the best items in the game. For big ticket items like mounts, however, it should be the same. You should have to quest for them, like Pallies and Warlocks. That would make them fun to work towards, and eliminate one of the major reasons people purchase gold.
And not like Sony's EQ "Station" or whatever.
You can buy the game for $5, and pay $5.99 a month in subscription fees, and you'll start at level 1, with the basic items.
Or, you can pay $15 for the game and $12.99 a month and start at level 30... and so forth.
I should patent this idea. Profit!!
I yearn for you tragically. A. T. Tappman, Chaplain, U.S. Army.
Again, two different issues.
1) People purchasing in-game wealth via out of game means.
2) People griefing players lower than them.
The two are not related to each other in any way. Are there griefers who get their stuff on Ebay? Sure, but that doesn't mean all griefers use ebay, nor that all people using ebay are griefers.
Personally, I don't buy ingame items, as I just think it's a poor way to spend my money. But I really don't care too much if other people do. Right now, I play WoW, and the impact of ebay just isn't very prominent. (Lineage II was much more heavily affected by outside sales, which is why I left the game)
Our guild did a naked newbie race from the gates of IronForge to the Darnassus bank. I won in about an hour and a half. Yeah, I died in some areas, but a lot of the road is pretty safe. If you want to do it, it's no big deal, as long as you have some idea what the route is.
Take a look at Guild Wars. Not only is player skill something that is required, there aren't any griefers, outside of the usual people trying to scam. Oh yeah, and you don't have to pay anything on top of the $40 you spent for the game.
You'd be 3 or 4 by the time you got there on area discovery!
Dan. -- So what if it's spelt wrong, nobody's perfect
I just picked up WoW a couple of months ago. It's my first MMORPG, so I'm still feeling my way around and learning how things work. I haven't bought gold, and haven't even really considered it. My reasons are pretty simple.
1) I'm still new, so the grinding doesn't really bore me yet. Yeah, some things are more fun then others, but it's all fun.
2) I got lucky and scored a couple of purple (epic?) items in the early 40's. Sold them both in the AH for about 100 gold. So I have my mount, decent gear, and enough spare cash that I can pick up the odd item that catches my eye.
3) I don't look on WoW as a competition. I realize a lot of the people who play are in the game for the raids, the battlegrounds, and to just strut around and show off their shiny uber gear. I also realize that most of them have been playing since the beta test, have a whole stable of high-level characters, and thousands of gold that they've gotten by whatever means. I don't worry about them. I play my game, solo mostly, have fun and don't worry about what other people have. I'd probably feel differently if I was on PvP server, but there's a reason that I didn't pick that.
That being said, it doesn't seem that Bliz is really all that concerned about the gold farmers. They've made some noise about how they don't tolerate that sort of thing, but that seems to be the extent of their actions. How hard would it be for them to put in a system that would track and log every transaction on a server? Then all they'd have to do is buy some gold off of somebody, find the account that sent it, trace the transaction trail backwards to the originating account, and then take appropriate action. Do that a few times, and gold farming is no longer a profitable occupation.
It's the land of the brave, and the home of the free
Where the less you know, the better off you'll be.