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The BBC On RMT
Real Money Transfer (RMT) is a contentious subject among MMOG players, but not something usually addressed by major news organizations. Joystiq has up a post on the BBC's coverage of gold farming in World of Warcraft , with a reporter 'live from Ironforge' addressing the issue. "The BBC has taken a straight look at Chinese gold farmers in the World of Warcraft. We'd fear for our own jobs when MSM begin competently portraying game news — thankfully, gold farming is old news and has already been well documented in the last two years, so we feel relatively safe. The piece takes a look at your typical Chinese gold farming operation, with some nifty use of green-screen by the reporter being magically teleported into the game. At least it wasn't another WoW game addiction piece."
On the plus side, at least it's a video type that plays easily under Linux (x86, granted. And only with a 32 bit browser, blech.) The flash video players really have taken the world by storm -- even msnbc.com uses them now, and now I can even see their movies without switching computers.
And D3 would be any better than WoW? Different I suppose, but still a grind/collection game with less to go and do than WoW.
"A little knowledge is a dangerous thing. Drink deeply or not at all."
So.. blizzard should trade millions of people paying over a hundred dollars a year (that's right, with 8 million subscribers, they can gross a billion dollars a year. That's more revenue than some countries.)
Can you be Even More Awesome?!
A lot of people like to casually play. I mean some lvl whatever something or other gets on (I've played these games but not WoW itself), does it really matter, in the grand scheme of things, whether he got that way by playing for days and days on his own, or bought a char last week?
To many people who have played these games extensively, yes, it matters quite a bit actually. Someone who puts time in to level a char up from scratch and puts in hundreds of hours of real game play is generally (not always) going to be a much better player and have a much better idea of how their char/class should be played. People who buy or power level their way up without taking the time to really learn what they are doing don't have the understanding, skill, and discipline required to tackle many of the higher level encounters. These games were not meant to be 'casual games' and can't really be lumped into the same class as your typical FPS or 1 player rpg. If you have put in the time to acquire the knowledge needed to play well, yes there are shortcuts. If you've maxed out 2 or 3 char's the hard way... absolutely it's acceptable to take a shortcut here and there. If you are just a 'casual' player, pay for gold/plat, and power level your first char up, you will miss much of what others have learned through hours of play. Fortunately, players like this are generally pretty easy to spot and can be avoided as they tend to make mistakes that regularly cost much time and frustration to more seasoned players.
Except they aren't. You're making the incorrect assumption of 8billion * $15. What you need to do is take the number of American subscribers, subtract from that the number of accounts that are merely free trial accounts (a great number of which are used by the gold sellers to spam), and you get the amount of money brought in in America. Then, for each market, figure out how it's priced (China is a huge market and they pay nowhere close to $15/month). We hear a lot about how many subscribers WoW has, but the actual amount of income is another matter.
This gives far too much credibility to the arguments gold sellers and gold buyers make. They are so, so easy to counter and refute, but did you see how much air time they gave the Blizzard rep? 15 seconds.
Did you see the shitty argument the "Gamer" called "Ryan" made? He has a full time job, and therefore he can't complete. Oh my god, you aren't a gamer, Ryan, you're just a delusional loser with an inadequacy complex. Then the BBC report bought the whole argument and went with it...
The whole "job vs gold" argument is a false dichotomy invented by the people that buy and sell gold. It doesn't exist. You can play the game perfectly well along side a full time job, still have a social life, and still "compete" (as the "gamer" "ryan" puts it). Some people suffer from an inadequacy complex more than others, I guess.