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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.
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.
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.
Unfortunately it does have an effect in-game... it unbalances the economy.
More availability of money -> higher prices -> need more money -> buy from gillsellers -> more availablity of money -> etc.
If FFXI it's got so bad that new players have basically no chance.. the inflation rate on Fairy is so ludicrous that you can see an item in the AH, go to farm the money and find it's doubled in price in a couple of days. There are so many people buying that they'll pay absolutely anything - and the gill sellers love this as they make more RL money, so they ramp the prices up as high as possible. Honest players can't afford anything any more, and newbies have no chance (the cash from the lowlevel quests that's supposed to get you started is now not enough to do anything with).
And we're not talking chump change either.. some of the more expensive items are being bought for $500 worth of gill... these aren't people with boring jobs paying $10 to get started - they're effectively buying their way through the whole game.
What you're describing can get really out of hand. You can get really unbalanced players, who buy all of their equip off of ebay and the like. SOE even opened a market system for trading in-game items for money. That's when I quit EQ2. I think this kind of thing is degrading to the gameplay and fun. It pisses me off to thing I earned all of my armor, which really isn't all that good anyway, and then I see some lvl 2 with a horse, which I can't even come close to affording in game, and it pisses me off. If you ask me its more enjoyable/satisfying to earn good equip in-game rather than to just be lazy and buy it off of ebay. You have to realize when you're playing an MMO, you're going to have to invest a good amount of time into it to have a half-way decent character.
It pisses me off to thing I earned all of my armor, which really isn't all that good anyway, and then I see some lvl 2 with a horse, which I can't even come close to affording in game, and it pisses me off.
Does it also piss you off when you see a high-school kid driving a $30K+ car that he obviously couldn't buy himself? "Twinking" is part of life, both in and out of games. The trick is to realize that stuff is just stuff, in-game and IRL.
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
This is a sign of how poorly designed these MMO's are. You consider the very act of playing the game to be a chore.
Why do you pay money, and then pay more money, for a game that you enjoy so little that you actually consider staying extra time at the office to avoid having to play it?
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.
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....
Maybe I'm missing the point here, but if what you want from a game is to be able to ask it what stuff you have and it says words to the effect of "you have all the best stuff" and then perhaps the occasional encounter with a big bad monster where you win easily because you have all the best stuff... then I can write that for you for a lot less than $50.
I mean isn't the challenge of actually getting the stuff supposed to be the substance of the game?
This just seems like saying "I could spend hours getting a high score on space invaders or I could pay someone else to get a high score for me". Well, yes but uh... huh?
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?
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.
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.
The root of the problem is that currency is constantly being produced, but it's being produced faster than it's destroyed. Every monster you kill generates some cash, but the only things that effectively 'destroy' money are 1) Mounts 2) Training 3) Repairs and 4) The limited number of useful things that NPCs sell. Everything else, you just sell right back to the gold farmer for that epic sword.
Trust me - if you're raiding MC or BWL there's plenty of money being destroyed in repairs. I'm up to 6 epics (two of which don't take durability loss) and it routinely costs me 4+ gold to repair after a guild raid. Our MT pays 20+ gold per raid in repairs.
You also missed consumable items for tradeskills and casting reagents which add up to quite a bit.
The implementation of 'soulbound' means that items are constantly taken out of circulation, there is no market for 2nd hand goods. You might have paid 300g for that sword, but then you got that really uber drop in MC and don't use it any more - there goes the cash. You can't on-sell the sword to get the money back.
Sara
Designer, Gamer, Macgrrl in an XP World