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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?
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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.
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.
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!
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!
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
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.
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
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....
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
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?
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.
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!
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.