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IGE On Why Power-Leveling Is Like Day Care
simoniker writes "In a rare interview with the COO of MMO item-selling giant IGE at Gamasutra, topics discussed include the ownership of in-game items, why gold selling can be a "great business opportunity" for Chinese suppliers, and why power-leveling (paying other players to increase your character stats) is something IGE will be moving into." From the article: "Clarke also noted that, in pure economic terms, paying people to level your character is 'a market which tends toward commoditization.' Of course, those handing over their character have 'a high degree of sensitivity' to what's happening to their virtual avatar — the COO quipped: 'It's almost like day care... you'd be amazed how much they check in.'"
People who use power-leveling services are in somewhat of a quandry: on one hand, they want to be the best (even if it means hiring someone to do all the work for them) but on the other hand they're worried about being ripped off (understandably) and losing their character/avatar/items/gold etc. Basically, their desire to be the best is at war with their obsession over the game and how horrible it would be to lose stuff due to a scam.
Then there's the amount of money invested in the service, which is usually a couple hundred dollars. Combine those two and it's not surprising to hear that they check in often.
-Parallax
Gold farming, loot farming and power leveling suck the fun out of all MMOs. I don't care if someone is making a living off of it, I don't care if it is so commonplace that most players accept it and even use these services and I don't care if you think I am being snooty. Don't sit there and whine about a broken economy... DEMAND that it be fixed!
I don't give a damn for a man that can only spell a word one way.
Mark Twain
It's almost like day care... you'd be amazed how much they check in.
He makes it sound like people are checking in because they love their characters like they love their kids. I think a more accurate assessment is that they're checking in to make sure they aren't getting ripped off.
I've never understood this mentality. If the game isn't any fun, don't play it and do something that is fun instead. Basically, if one thinks a game is the most dull, repetitive time sink ever (which a lot of them are) maybe paying a monthly fee to pay someone else to do the "work" is a horrible waste of money. By paying someone to powerlevel a character, the power-levelee is just admitting they've fallen victim to an enormous bait and switch: the odd concept of "end-game." The really mind-numbing thing is that the end-game is almost always just more and more grinding! People are paying a monthly fee to pay someone else to level a character only to do the same thing all over in the end-game. Stupid consumerism, yay!
I play an MMO that is notorious for it's lack of end-game (City of Heroes). I play it because I enjoy it (a concept apparently foreign to many-a-player), not to prove anything to anyone, gloat about my uber-high level characters, or make money in some zany e-bay scheme. The entire concept of games being fun is lost on a large portion of the MMO community because they're too competitive to realise they aren't having any fun (or even playing the game, I guess).
Usually it is enjoyable the first time up. After that it becomes very tedious. Not that I would ever pay for this service, but I can understand why people would do it.
Support a great indie game: http://www.abaddon360.com
Actually, I agree with you. The reason we have analogies is so that we can take something complex and hard to understand...and make it easier to understand by comparing it something that another person can easily identify with. Power leveling is not complex. It makes sense they check in a lot since they have paid a large chunk of change and that the other person could be ruining their account.
Support a great indie game: http://www.abaddon360.com
The game occassionaly asks for random digits/letters from your credit card number + CCV, bank account number, home address or some other bit of information you used at signup and are not going to pass around lightly.
The gaming company already has it, but do you really want to tell a power leveler that kind of information?
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
Congratulations, you have just created a game that no one would want to play! There are games that exist that require skill to play...they are called FPS. We are talking MMORPG...and WoW actually does do a very good job of making it so that farmers aren't really a big deal. The best drops are things that you can only get when you are in a group with other people running instances. You can not sell these things so they are meaningless to the economy. These items are much better than things you can purchase. People still buy gold because they like a shortcut. And even in FPS, people use cheats to get ahead. In your game they would just get a program that recorded mouse movements so that they could create the runes with a single click thus removing all skill from the game other that the small amount of strategy left (which will already be figured out what is the best thing to do and probably be scripted).
There is only one way to curtail (and that is the best you can do) gold farming/selling greatly. And that is to ban the people who BUY the gold. The gold sellers will always come back with new characters to sell gold. But if their market is too afraid to buy because they will be banned, then they can't make a profit and go find something else to do.
Support a great indie game: http://www.abaddon360.com
I've played MMORPG's for years (from EverQuest, to Dark Age, to WOW these days) and it becomes very easy to tell the difference between a player who paid for power leveling services (or just had a friend power level them, as was the case in EverQuest and DAoC more often than not) and someone who actually played the game from level 1 to MaxLevel. Almost without fail, the person who was power leveled has no clue how to play their character and knows nothing of common game concepts (pulling, tanking, whatever). Worse still, it usually results in players who have no respect for the other people on the server. It's not uncommon for power leveled players to "ninja loot" (steal an item that drops for a party, then immediately leave the group) and cause other forms of grief to others.
These types of players end up getting a bad reputation eventually, so it becomes easier to avoid them; however, it's still a giant pain in the ass, especially if you're trying to get a group together to do something and you need to fill a spot with someone you haven't played with before. You take a huge risk when you invite a random person along to go do a quest or complete an instance. Will they know how to play their character or will they suck and end up causing the group to die and have to start over multiple times?
There will always be people who just aren't good at playing their character, but usually anyone who plays from 1 to 60 (or 50 or whatever) becomes at least decent at their role. Power leveling services compound the problem by introducing even more crappy players into the world, and that's the main reason why I hate them. I'm not fond of the gold-buying services either, but they aren't as big of a problem. If someone spends a couple hundred bucks to buy 10000 gold so they can go buy whatever it is they want, it's no skin off my back.
The unfortunate thing about IGE is that Blizzard will probably not try to solve the problem with litigation. If Bliz took IGE to court, and IGE won (thus proving in-game items and currency are owned by the player), services like these will blossom overnight and there will be nothing Bliz or anyone else can do about it. So instead, Bliz will just keep trying to track the farmers down and ban them, which is a never-ending battle.
AaulThe viability of powerleveling/goldselling/etc as a business is directly proportional to how much of the game is simply not fun for players.
The real solution is not to try and enact policies and game systems to make powerleveling difficult, but instead to design the game to make it undesired. If a leveling/farming market springs up, that's your cue that this is an area of the game which needs reinventing as something that players actually _enjoy_ doing.
Wouldn't it be more like,
"Leaving your child with a felon who runs a crack lab, and if the felon gets busted you lose your child and all parenting rights forever"
Since if your character is caught hacking/botting/being power leveled it can get the account banned.
Does IGE have a garuntee in case the charcter is banned?
Powerlevelling is good, because it lets people play the part of the game they enjoy, and that's what gaming is all about.
I know some people don't like it, they say that people don't work to get their character to level 60 or whatever is max.
I say that's a lie, i say people choose to work at their job, instead of doing what many consider a chore (ingame) to get those stats.
If you have 3 friends playing WoW and they're all maxxed out, but because you just started in a lawfirm,
it'll take you half a year to get there, or it'll take you half a days paycheck to be able to play with your friends, I know, what I'd choose.
And as many people have already pointed out, they can't buy skill anyway, so why on earth are you whining about it?
powerlevelling is the only way people with jobs can stay in the competition.
This on the other hand can be used by any gamer before joining up on an mmorg: You should look at what people offer on ebay,
there you will see which parts of the game that are boring.
Nothing in game would be for sale unless it's either difficult to get or boring to get.
If enough people want something which is obtainable there will be a market for it.
Nobody wants boredom, so it feels unfair when others can buy their way around it, but you didn't do it.
i foresee games where everything is for sale for real (possibly also ingame) currency. When you realize you only need that one crystal to finish your monolithic spaceship of doom, you pull out a menu, and purchase it, without ever leaving the game OR you decide to spend 5 days getting to chasing your goal if you like to go adventuring for stuff, either way it will mean that people can play the game as they want to.
Second life is already doing this to some extent, although in many ways i'm not sure whether to call it a game.
I foresee much more of this, including games where it's much easier to do product placement and the likes, if can live with that, you save 2$ a week.
I must admit, i myself am somewhat annoyed with char building, there's a reason i refer to it as grinding, i'm sure you know the term.
I love doing pk (or pvp if you want) because that's the place where you're facing human adversaries.
It is also my experience, from various games, that killing mobiles is not proper preperation for fighting players, although it can help getting group fighting tightened up.
from a foreign aid point of view, this is one of the ways you'll be able to give money directly to the poor people of poor nations. Don't be mislead, those are the people working the sweatshops. The only big problem I see, is that people don't make requirements to those they buy services from, i guess i'd prefer to buy my chars Max Havelaar style.'
anyways, i'm heading off topic, cyas and i hope you'll think about why it is people will pay to avoid parts of a game.
Blah blah sig blah blah blah irony blah blah