The MMOG Moneysellers Respond To Your Questions

Last week we asked you for questions to pass on to the folks behind the Gamers2Gamers RMT service. The response, from reading the comments, was mixed. The thinking seemed to mostly be that this was a marketing stunt, aimed at getting people to check out their website. There were several good questions, though, and we passed on the hardest ones to Sparter CEO Dan Kelly and CTO Boris Putanec. The response from these executives should lay to rest for you the issue of whether this was a marketing ploy or not. Moreover, some of their answers give insight into the company's grasp of the RMT market as a whole, and their chances of success in the competitive MMOG genre. I encourage you to read on to see how they've responded to our queries. Thanks to the Sparter execs for their timely response. Marketing by Zonk:
Many users expressed annoyance that you wanted to speak directly with them via this venue. Your interest in speaking with users was seen by many as a blatant attempt at marketing. Is your interest in contacting Slashdot motivated more by an interest in talking over the issue of RMT in a public forum, or are you primarily interested in promoting your new service?

Sparter Executives:
We believe Sparter is a product that helps gamers and so of course want to let them know about it. But a core part of our mission is putting a bright light on RMT and promoting a fair and open conversation about gamers' interest in buying and selling game items.

We think there are good things about RMT, but also recognize the bad behavior that it sometimes engenders (though bad behavior in-game is not limited to people who trade gold). We need to sort fact from conjecture and based upon a good debate of the issues work together to build a workable solution. Our point of view is that spammers, bot farmers, hackers and dupers are the real villains. The gamer who has gold to sell and the gamer who wants to buy are not bad people and supporting their needs can help the industry grow. We approached Slashdot because it's a great forum in which to initiate the conversation.

RMT Legality by Cirak:
I'm concerned that this platform is devoted to promoting activity that the largest game (WoW) explicitly forbids. How do you plan to handle the fact that the entire premise of your site is one that could get your "customers" banned from the games they play?

Sparter Executives:
Good question. Here's how we see it: publishers do not have the right to tell gamers that they can't accept money from someone outside of the game. Trade can only happen when the game design provides the mechanism for transfer of game items. It's quite common for gamers to barter with each other in game (e.g., I'll give you 5 gold if you'll lead me on a quest, farm these for me while I farm those for you, entry fees to join guilds, etc) but publishers want to say that it's wrong for you to give someone $5 outside of the game?

We hope to convince publishers that gamers should be viewed differently than in-game spammers, bot farmers, hackers and, to some extent, B2C sites. Our goal is to keep RMT between gamers. Buying from another gamer on Sparter is 30-40% cheaper than buying from a professional seller's web site and it puts money in the pocket of another gamer. This is bad for IGE and good for the industry. What's more, healthy secondary markets grow primary markets.

Our ultimate goal is to partner with publishers to protect their rights, reward them for the value they create, and be more effective in banning spammers, bot farmers and hackers from a sanctioned secondary marketplace. Until then, we do our best to make sure our users are aware of the risks that non-sanctioned RMT presents in games where the publisher is hostile to their consumers' needs.

Legal? by pionzypher:
With the recent lawsuit against peons4hire.com, Blizzard appears intent on cracking down against the larger players in the business. How do you intend on avoiding legal suits against the company?

Sparter Executives:
The peons4hire suit focuses on that company's use of WoW's in-game mail system to market peons4hire's services. Gold selling is not part of the suit. As gamers we support Blizzard in its attempts to shut down in-game spamming. We don't advertise in-game and never will without publisher approval.

There are several reasons why we think publishers are not likely to sue Sparter. First, we think publishers realize that they don't have the right to restrict a user from receiving compensation from another user outside of the game. In fact, RMT cannot occur if the game design doesn't allow for one user to hand-off an item to another user. The only difference with RMT is that rather than giving the item as a gift or in barter (e.g., for another item or help in the game), you are receiving real money outside of the game. Second, the risk of losing in court is potentially disastrous for the publisher. This is why we view the lawsuit against IGE by the contingency lawyer in Miami as potentially hazardous to the industry. Sparter is trying to be proactive on this issue by requiring that all our users recognize the rights of content originators and the limitations of gamers' rights. Third, we estimate there are several hundred B2C web sites in operation, most outside of the jurisdiction of US courts. Lawsuits are not going to be effective in shutting down RMT. As long as there is a demand, there will be a supply. So let's figure out the best way for the demand to be served and take control of the situation for the benefit of gamers and the industry as a whole.

What are the real measures that will be taken? by moderatorrater:
A lot of MMO content is less enjoyable because of gold farmers and others looking at playing the game for monetary gain rather than enjoyment. What measures, if any, will be used to make sure that the sellers are 'legitimately' playing the game? If not, how is this service actually helping the gamers for whom gold selling is an inconvenience?

Sparter Executives:
Sparter does not buy or sell game items and we don't have an in-game presence. As a result, we cannot know for sure how our sellers behave in the game. But if you believe as we do that the truly damaging behavior is exhibited by the spammers, bot farmers, hackers and dupers, then the more we migrate the market to a true gamer-to-gamer exchange, the harder it is for those folks to profit from their actions.

We designed Sparter to give the gamer every opportunity to compete with the professional seller. They play for love of the game, don't have any overhead, marketing costs or customer service operations. The gamer will always be able to undercut the B2C. There will always be sellers of different sizes, but gamers are selling on Sparter and taking business away from the B2Cs like IGE and peons4hire (some of whom not only spam in-game but, we suspect, are the primary currency outlet for the dupers, hackers and bot farmers). In fact, our typical seller undercuts IGE by 30-40% and is making enough to pay for his WoW subscription.

Without a partnership with the publisher, we have no way of knowing how our sellers are behaving in game. That's why we're talking with developers and publishers and asking them to partner with us to help regulate the secondary market and, when justified, ban those who behave badly from not only the game (e.g., publisher shuts down their account) but also the marketplace (e.g., Sparter bans their selling account for all games). We are well positioned to view trading activity and supply levels by game, server and seller. If we see something suspicious, we would gladly flag this for a publisher for further investigation. Our goal is to be the marketplace for good gamers; the truly bad actors of the RMT world can sell their gold elsewhere.

Heavyweight Perception by Zonk
The heads of several Massive development firms have come out squarely against the concept of Real Money Transfer in current AAA online games. For example, Mark Jacobs of EA Mythic has been particularly vocal in his opinion of the practice. Given the negative view of RMT by these companies, do you have any plans to attempt to sway their opinions? Ie: will there be any attempt to have game companies 'buy in' on the Gamers2Gamers concept, in a theoretical rather than financial manner?

Sparter Executives:
We definitely want to get publishers and developers on board with Sparter and Gamer2Gamer trade. We're talking to many publishers and explaining our perspective on the situation. We spend a lot of time asking questions and listening to their concerns. We think Sparter is on the right path to create a workable solution for the industry, but if there are better ideas we want to hear them. That is also why we approached Slashdot, so we could hear from gamers other than those using our service.

We think it's certain behaviors such as spamming, bot farming, hacking and duping that cause the most concern. Many see the B2Cs such as IGE as supporters of these behaviors; we see B2Cs as unnecessary in the long term if we can turn this into a C2C market. If publishers can help us do this we can keep the purchasing power that is going to B2Cs in the pockets of gamers. That's good for publishers and good for the industry. There are many issues wrapped into how RMT is perceived and we need to start breaking the problem down and creating solutions.

Cheating Your System by eldavojohn:
How will you protect against 'buyers' who put the money in the escrow service, receive the goods and then claim they never got them and demand the escrow back? In Warcraft, I could forward the gold to another character and claim I never got it. Then you have two customers in a dirty dispute. Wouldn't it be smarter (but more work) for you to also have an intermediary account in game to hold the goods and money at the same time? How do you plan to resolve these issues that auction sites like eBay have to deal with?

Sparter Executives:
Our first goal is to protect the buyer; we do this by escrowing the buyer's funds and not paying the seller unless they deliver. As a result it is impossible for a seller to profit on Sparter by defrauding a buyer. The "lying buyer" is a different problem. We do have systems in place to catch fraudsters and identify suspicious patterns of behavior, and we use this information to ban buyers we suspect of lying (a costly ban since they can never buy on Sparter again). But we cannot entirely fix this problem without help from publishers. By choosing to not support their consumers' needs, publishers have cast gamers into a very risky grey market dominated by B2Cs and replete with fraud. Organizing a clean and sanctioned market is the best way to protect good gamers.

The Assured Protection of Human Rights by eldavojohn:
So you say you work out the middle man in this horrible scheme of capitalism. But I'm still concerned that the people who are farming right now at a severely reduced pay rate are doing so because they don't have the money to front for the operation and they have no choice but to remain a pawn. They make very little money and the real profits go to some American guy manipulating them all and paying for their accounts. Tell me again how your service does not promote this middleman from acting like a player? How am I assured that some innocent kid who is doing this as a job to make money does not earn my gold? How am I assured this isn't still some cog in a scheme to exploit foreign workers?

Sparter Executives:
We believe that C2C markets like Sparter's Gamer2Gamer exchange empower and help the people you mentioned. By lowering the cost of entry, Sparter allows everyone to be listed and compete in an integrated, open marketplace. Just as eBay and others have made it possible for thousands of small home-based businesses to flourish, we believe a C2C approach to RMT will create entrepreneurs out of the people who can only be employees now.

In recent years, a lot of folks have come to connect RMT to goldfarming sweatshops. We fully recognize that many gamers have hard feelings toward farmers, but the sweatshop assumption has been blown out of proportion. Our experience is that the reality is far more complex. It is important to keep in mind that farming produces a competitive wage and is not a low-quality job in the countries we are talking about. To see what we mean, check out the recent article about this subject in the New York Times Magazine by Julian Dibbell (http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/17/magazine/17lootfarmers-t.html).

FraudStopping by Howzer:
You claim you use (quoting from your site) "state-of-the-art technology to root out fraud". Since simple fraud -- I say I didn't get something that someone says they gave me in game -- can't be checked by you unless you have the keys to WoW or EQ2 or SWG (or whatever) what "state-of-the-art technology" would you be talking about?

Sparter Executives:
This question is very similar to the earlier "Cheating Your System" question which outlines the fraud problem. As mentioned there, we have systems which look at all aspects of the transaction to gauge its likeliness to be fraudulent. Our strongest long-term weapon is the ability to ban participants from the marketplace, a tactic which is much more effective in the C2C world where a scammer cannot just move on to the next gold selling B2C website. Since gamers on Sparter tend to under price the B2Cs by 30-40%, getting banned for bad behavior is stealing from your own pocket.

Market Control & Conversion System? by eldavojohn:
Will your site will work out converting currencies in one game to currencies in another game--so that if I play Warcraft and Final Fantasy I can spend my gold for gil? If you are doing this, how are you going to keep these markets in check? Will it all just be normalized against the dollar? Bottom line question is whether or not you'll control dumping of virtual currency or if you'll institute ranges. If you're not instituting limits or regulating in a Federal Reserve type manner, how are you going to protect against a single person running the market (buying all the gold and sitting on it while letting it drip out slowly at an extreme amount of USD)? Will you post graphs of each MMO's currency so we can watch currencies like SWG's credit against Warcraft's Gold?

Sparter Executives:
We are always evaluating new features and functionality for Sparter's platform, and some gamers have asked for direct currency to currency trades. As you suggest, the current solution is to trade one MMO currency into USD and then buy the other MMO currency with USD. The current per game/realm/faction currency graphs against USD would allow you to synthesize cross-currency graphs if you were interested in a particular combination.

Your "control of the market" questions raise a very interesting point that bears some careful analysis. There is a good reason why the Federal Reserve is separate and distinct from the SEC and the banks--this allows each to make the best decision for their area of responsibility. Internally, we have discussed implementing curbs on certain activities, but those actions have not been taken to date. This is an area where we would welcome input from developers, publishers, traders, gamers and economists on the best set of rules to follow. The right rules for environments where production theoretically is infinite are not always easy to determine.

Taxes by hardburn:
Inevitably, when Governments hear about money being passed around, their first thought is how to tax it. MMOGs can take the position that their currency isn't real, and therefore shouldn't be taxed. However, being able to transfer virtual currency for real cash weakens that argument. I personally don't want to play a game where I have to pay sales tax on buying items, or income tax for an in-game business, and I'm sure I'm not alone. Given this, do you see any foreseeable ways to keep taxes out of games?

Sparter Executives:
We cannot give tax advice and anyone who has specific questions about their situation should consult a tax professional. However, as we see it this issue is much bigger than just RMT, with governments thinking very hard about how to tap the revenue from all forms of online commerce. The constant debate about charging sales tax for Internet transactions is a perfect example--maybe a hopeful one since the catalog/online industries have managed to avoid that so far.

As to your question about income tax, because our typical seller is earning roughly enough to pay for his WoW subscription, we see selling on Sparter as analogous to selling on eBay, putting on a garage sale, or running a great lemonade stand.

Comments

But the TOS agreement

[svendsen]

"Here's how we see it: publishers do not have the right to tell gamers that they can't accept money from someone outside of the game."

but they do have the right to say if you want to play our game then you may not accept money from someone outside of the game for in game services/items/whatever because it's a private game on private servers, and the TOS you agree to when you play the game. Just seems like more people and more people want to make a buck no matter who they trample over.

Re:But the TOS agreement

[Jarjarthejedi]

The validity of such an article in the TOS agreements isn't unquestionable and is becoming more unlikely every day. The instant Congress makes virtual items taxable that agreement is meaningless, it's akin to a bank saying "If you want to bank here then you can only use checks, you can't withdraw your money or use credit or debit". Actually it's more akin to a bank saying "If you want to bank here then you can never withdraw your money, you can only trade it to other accounts here without any compensation for the trade outside the bank. If we find out that Bill gave you $2 out of the bank to give his account $2 we will confiscate your money."

So long as virtual items remain virtual the agreement has some legal binding (though that is questionable as well, even a contract can't make you sign away certain rights as I understand it). I'd rank the questionality of these activities somewhere around watching anime only released in Japan online, it's not exactly legal, but the chance of being sued for making it available is low and the chance of losing a lot by doing it even lower. Blizzard (or another company) would have to get evidence that one or more in-game trades were precipitated by this service, which would require a lot more work than it sounds like. Firstly the act of trading a large amount of money in and of itself can't be considered for evidence. Even if it can be shown that both players involved have accounts with these moneysellers, and that one may work for the moneysellers, that doesn't mean the trade was due to real money being exchanged. To go after these guys Blizzard (or another company) would have to show that real money was exchanged, a difficult proposition with detectives and much more difficult for a group who have little real world presence in terms of law enforcement.

He's probably wrong, at the moment. In all likelyhood the count would uphold that, for now, the company has the right to tell gamers they can't do that. But, much as with DRM at the moment, they have little ability to stop gamers. The moment they confiscate too many accounts that weren't involved in questionable activities is the moment the court may start looking at them in a different light, even taking away virtual possessions that have time value to their owner can be considered confiscation of possessions which requires at least some proof. It's a gray area, I doubt the big MMO's will go after them because of the dangers involved but what they are doing is, at least to my understanding at the present time, questionably legal...

Re:But the TOS agreement

[shaitand]

'Just seems like more people and more people want to make a buck no matter who they trample over.'

Last I checked violated the TOS doesn't trample anyone in and of itself.

Re:But the TOS agreement

[Anonymous Coward]

The argument is ludicrous. It's like saying that the casinos have no right to prevent me from cheating. It's their game, you're connecting to their servers to participate in their world. You don't have "rights". You don't have even fundamental freedoms like the right to free speech, free association, against search and seizure, etc.

So the idea that you should have the "right" to do whatever you want with THEIR goods on THEIR servers makes no sense -- this is purely rationalization to justify their staying in business. You don't own that BoE epic thingamajigger and you never will -- it is on Blizzard's server, and you have no right to do anything besides what they allow you to do with it. You are not the same as your character -- indeed, you don't even own your character.

Re:But the TOS agreement

[svendsen]

All the others who play the game fairly who feel the effects are.

Re:But the TOS agreement

[EvilNight]

There are concepts in economics that are much like a 'human right' and are defended as such, regardless of what any contracts signed may stipulate. Typically, the right of resale is one of them, at least in capitalist markets. No one can tell you that you cannot sell a good or service you have, or resell another good or service you bought - such a thing simply won't hold up in court since it defeats the purpose of basic economics. Of course, what do you do when you're technically a lessee of your body and the entire world you live in is a virtual one owned by the same people leasing you the body? It probably comes down to whose rights are more important to the court in that case.

Companies will gladly take any and all rights they can from you. That's their nature - they don't care about you and they don't see the world the way that you do as a consumer. They can't even be expected to know what they are and are not allowed to do - there's so much law on the books these days that Kim Peek couldn't keep it all in his head. If you want to retain rights each time a brand new marketplace opens up (virtual property for example) then you'll need to speak up when the companies inevitably deny you the same basic rights in the virtual marketplace that they provide in the physical one.

This question is about as grey as it gets in a courtroom, by the way. Virtual property law is still uncharted territory. The best the court can do (and what they usually do) is extend real world property law into the virtual world. That's not necessarily a good idea, not without thinking it through.

Perhaps you'd do better to look at the gaming industry as an economic market. They've now created 'virtual worlds' which are themselves economic markets locked down right now and with no way to trade goods between each other. Would it be good for everyone if a mechanism appeared that connected these virtual markets to the real world market and to each other? That's a lot of economic opportunity. People would find ways to use it that none of us can possibly imagine. If all of those markets were connected as well, you could prevent one company from printing infinite money, for example, since their overall value in the mass market would plummet due to inflation.

You may agree to any number of license agreements, business contracts, and terms of service in your time. Chances are damn good that there are plenty of provisions in all of them that won't stand up in a court of law because they violate one precedent or right or another - just ask Microsoft how bitter that pill about the right to resell Windows was to swallow when they lost. The only way to find out is to put it in front of a judge and see what the verdict is. None of it is ever final until the court says it is.

I'll admit that the responses to these questions were far more intelligent and surprising than I was expecting when I clicked on the link. I was expecting gold farmers and got responses worthy of VP capital investment (albeit very risky, but also very exciting). This company has taken the position that these virtual markets must be opened up and connected, and this is by no means a crazy idea. Eventually they'll sit down with the MMO companies, or with their lawyers in front of a judge, and we'll find out which way the virtual property market is going to go. Frankly, I think open is always better than closed.

Re:But the TOS agreement

[moderatorrater]

Just seems like more people and more people want to make a buck no matter who they trample over. They're trampling over people with this service? What you have is a person with excess gold meeting a person with excess money and the two agreeing to fix the other's problem. It seems to me that Blizzard should not be regulating behavior outside the game.

Re:But the TOS agreement

[0racle]

Last time I played, it did.

Re:But the TOS agreement

[Y2KDragon]

But your entire argument hinges on one simple fact, that the player owns the character. They do not, Blizzard does. The only thing you receive for your monthy fee is the "right to access their systems". You don't own the character. You don't own the gear on the character. You don't own the gold the character has amassed. Therefore, you don't have the right to "sell" anything for real world money. The data is intellectual property, owned by Blizzard. Selling this data for real money by anyone other than an authorized Blizzard representative is violating copyright laws pertaining to said intellectual property. I don't care how you argue "rights", it's still wrong.

Re:But the TOS agreement

[shaitand]

First. There is no correlation between the TOS and fair play. Just as there is no correlation between obeying the law and doing what is right in the real world. It is possible to break the law without doing wrong and it is possible to break the TOS without doing wrong.

Second. What effects are those? Buying and selling gold certainly doesn't hurt anyone. That part where you grind and work hard for something in the game to earn it and get pissed when I buy it is not you feeling the effects. That is just you being an asshole. My difficulty or lack thereof in acquiring a reward does NOT impact you or have anything to do with how easy or difficult it was for you to obtain the same thing. You need to stop grinding your teeth whenever someone has a better lot than you and start worrying about YOUR fortune.

Perhaps the reason I bought the item/gold was because while you were grinding in the game, I was grinding in the real world earning the money I used to buy said item/gold.

The problem is the grind, not the people violating the TOS. Leveling should be more of an introductory tutorial to the game and your character and should last a couple days. Gold should fall off trees, and everyone should start at maximum skill in tradeskills. As long as parts of the game are work rather than play, I am going to choose alternative methods that let me bypass them. Me doing so, doesn't affect you in the slightest.

Re:But the TOS agreement

[EvilNight]

Your ownership of the character is debatable. The argument is that you own the time you invest, and all of the economic goods that proceed from that investment - of which the character is one. I'd be no more right to say that you absolutely own the character than you are to say you own absolutely nothing. We've already established that what the contract says is really just a wish list for the companies who wrote them. You are taking the position that just because the company owns the hardware, they own all the virtual property on that hardware. That's like saying a bank owns your money because your money is just a bunch of ones and zeros in their mainframe somewhere. It's ridiculous. Of course, so is saying you 'own' a character.

When both sides of the argument are ridiculous, the question will only be answered in a courtroom, not an online discussion forum.

Re:But the TOS agreement

[shaitand]

In what way? Someone having an easier time than you is not something that affects you. There are ways to violate the terms of service that hurt you like hacking your account or hacking in a way that impacts PvP but there are zillions of ways to violate the terms of service that don't hurt you at all.

Re:But the TOS agreement

[syntaxglitch]

But your entire argument hinges on one simple fact, that the player owns the character. They do not, Blizzard does.

Many, many players see it differently, and it would be rash to assume the government will never agree with them--especially when acknowledging the commonly held attitude (that players DO own their virtual stuff in some sense) helps open the door to taxation for large transactions of virtual goods.

Re:But the TOS agreement

[svendsen]

I love the real life analogy to a VIDEO GAME, it makes no sense. Video games != Real life.

Remember you don't won the characters or items. You pay Blizzard to have the privilege of using their servers in the way they tell you too. Everything belongs to blizzard.

It affects people by inflation, making spam bots, gold farmers sealing off areas (enter one where you need a drop...good luck). If what you do affects anyone's playing experience because you broke the terms of the TOS then that's the issue. So yes it DOES affect me. If what you did had 0 impact on anyone else not a problem too bad it doesn't

But then again people are so selfish now a days who cares right? I mean you call me an asshole just for disagreeing with you with valid counter points.

Re:But the TOS agreement

[Anonymous Coward]

The thing is, its really very easy to bypass that argument even if the courts end up ruling that you have the right interpretation. Rather than sell 100 gold, you just sell 1 hour of your time. Then in that 1 hour time, you "manage" to farm 100 gold and give it to the buyer. Sure its a semantic argument, but isn't that what legality hinges on anyhow?

Re:But the TOS agreement

[NMerriam]

It's like saying that the casinos have no right to prevent me from cheating.

Cheating at a casino is illegal, not a violation of the casino's terms of service. A Casino can kick you out for any reason they like, it's private property. But they can't deprive you of your legal property (whether winnings or personal belongings) just because they kicked you out.

The only remaining legal question is whether "virtual" property is owned by the service provider or the gamer. You agree with the Terms of Service, but I suspect courts will eventually rule otherwise. Simply too much economic value is going online and will continue to do so for the legal system (and legislature) to ignore it all.

Re:But the TOS agreement

[myowntrueself]

Typically, the right of resale is one of them, at least in capitalist markets. No one can tell you that you cannot sell a good or service you have, or resell another good or service you bought - such a thing simply won't hold up in court since it defeats the purpose of basic economics.

Hey, good point.

I must remember to tell my dope-peddling friends about that one. Maybe they can give the judge the URL to your slashdot posting.

Re:But the TOS agreement

[osgeek]

There are tons of arguments about how paying for gold outside of the game changes the way it works.

• It creates real world economies that produce hordes of third-world sweat shops farming in areas where I'd like to just be enjoying myself with other gamers. Farmers suck. In-game spammers suck. These things would be a rarity if not for real world value driving them.
• I enjoy playing by "the rules of the game". I don't want to cheat by leaving the constraints of the rules. I want everyone else to obey the rules as well. If you have more gold than I do, I don't want it to be because your mommy gives you a nice cash allowance. I want it to be because you're all pasty faced from a lack of sunlight because you put the time in on the game.
• It affects me because I know about it.

The shittiest part, though, is the constant reminder that you can't even be allowed to agree with a group of folks on how to play a god damned game without cheating -- then go enjoy yourself. No, the world is full of cheating assholes who absolutely, positively, must get in there and hose your enjoyment doing things to you and your GAME world that you never agreed to remotely in the first place. I don't enjoy playing tennis with losers who cheat. Why should I enjoy sharing a game world with cheaters?

Rationalize all you want with "I work hard out of the game world" excuses. That's all twisted self-justifying bullshit. You're a cheater. Wear the badge proudly.

Re:But the TOS agreement

[Anonymous Coward]

To go after these guys Blizzard (or another company) would have to show that real money was exchanged, a difficult proposition with detectives and much more difficult for a group who have little real world presence in terms of law enforcement.

I'll take subpoenas for $200, Alex.

Re:But the TOS agreement

[Saurian_Overlord]

"That part where you grind and work hard for something in the game to earn it and get pissed when I buy it is not you feeling the effects. That is just you being an asshole."

No, that is me not having pockets as deep as yours. When being able to succeed in a game is based on who can fork over more cash, it becomes very much like gambling. I do like to gamble now and then, but that's not why i play(ed) WoW. I got irritated and ultimately bored with the need to play for hours on end just to earn enough gold for a simple weapon upgrade, all due to the fact that someone with as much spare cash as you can simply buy it for real money. I work very hard for my real money, and i can't justify spending more than the already pricey $15/month on a video game, and i'm not the only one. If that means the play balance is tipped out of our favor, then so be it; we'll stop playing. Not all of us are that addicted.

Besides the in-game inflation it provokes, there's a more indirect way of these things affecting other players as well. If someone i enjoy playing with discontinues their own playing after becoming fed up with such activities as RMT, i'll be irritated by that person's absence. If a large number of my friends do the same thing, i might decide it's not worth playing anymore.

Another place i've seen indirect effects is on RP (Role-Playing) servers. Many of my "real-life" friends who play WoW have moved their characters to RP servers because they are less populated and less plagued by RMT/farming. However, the "rules" of a RP server can't be strictly enforced, and people such as my friends who abuse RP servers (i.e., don't actually role-play) contribute immensely to the already existent degradation of gameplay quality. Again, players looking for RP may begin canceling their accounts in favor of other games.

I know i'm not the only one who feels that way; i know personally a number of people who have stated that they don't play anymore due to activities like this. I would think the threat/possibility of losing a large portion of their customer base should bother publishers more than anything. That is why the clause in question exists in the TOS; it IS to promote fairness, but the motive is profit. I suppose the publishers would take more action if their profitability was more seriously threatened.

Re:But the TOS agreement

[Dirk the Daring]

Ignoring the "real world" effects for a moment, I'm going to focus on the in-game.

Remember that these are MMORPGS. And although the game design limits the amount that one player can change another's gaming experience, economy is one thing that all players share.

If players are buying gold, they are intending to buy things with that gold. These items (and these are probably only the few "best" items) will have an increased demand, making it more difficult for everyone to get temp.

Because of the influx of gold, and the scarcity of these items, players will be willing to pay more for them. This will make it more difficult for non-gold-buying people to get these items.

Because there are now more people with these items, they become a requirement in order to be invited to join parties (raids, group, insert system here). "What? you don't have the +10 dragonslayer? Sorry, we'll take Bob who does."

The gold also has to come from somewhere. Although games like WoW allow for players to collect money in their own "instance", people frequently collect gold in common areas-- which means that I have increased competition in that area.

You're affecting players other than yourself. If you are dumping gold on my server, you are:
    * Increasing the cost of items / Decreasing the value of gold
    * Decreasing the availability of items
    * Increasing the requirements to compete
    * Increasing the difficulty to play specific parts of the game

The short answer is-- no, I don't directly really care that you got the +10 dragonslayer. Show the mighty prowess of your wallet when you wave it around. However, indirectly, you're making the game imperceptively less fun for me. On a small scale, I honestly don't care. When a large number of people are doing it...

Re:But the TOS agreement

[aztektum]

I don't get these comparisons to banks. Inside WoW every piece of loot, gold, and the odds of attaining it are configured by Blizzard. It's a bunch of scripts and databases sitting there saying "If $player performs $action x amount of times, he earns y."

Blizzard paid people to sit and create every piece of art and the logic that dictates how it's doled out. Blizzard OWNS that as intellectual property. You pay to basically run around their maze finding their hidden treasure.

This has nothing to do with banks. In the real world who the hell would deal with a bank with these kinds of rules?

Re:But the TOS agreement

[Admiral Ag]

Let's play a game. It's called chess. Now, let's change the rules so that either of us can buy back any piece we lose for 20 dollars.

Who would want to play such a game? Almost no-one except rich people.

Gold buyers are cheats. In World of Warcraft, your advancement in the game is supposed to reflect the time and skill (both physical and social) that you put into the game. When you see some character draped in epics go up against you in PvP, you can't complain if that person has simply devoted much more time to the game than you have. Progression is tied to effort and skill, and that is fair. But if people can simply buy characters or equipment, then that moves the competition outside of the game and into the real world. What's the point of having a virtual world if the competition transcends it?

Unfortunately, gold buying is endemic in WoW. It's one of the reasons I cancelled and will probably never play another MMO. I worked a long time on my character, and yet I would often see Night Elf Hunters (why almost always them?) draped in craftable epics and epic drops that cost thousands on the AH and with only a vague idea of how to play the game. My favourite would be people who had raiding gear but were unaware of the existence of the dungeons from which they had acquired such gear.

And there always seem to be a lot of people with inordinate amounts of gold and nonsensical explanations of how they got it.

It may well not be possible to run an MMO without endemic cheating (we can't even run a real world society without it), but that just serves to make MMOs rather unattractive to me.

Re:But the TOS agreement

[Opportunist]

The bank parallel suffers from a very complicated problem: Money (and trading in money) is fairly tightly regulated. The "virtual money" isn't.

What it comes down to is that you're still bound by the license agreement between you and the provider of the software, the one running the MMORPG. By your logic, I could not demand from someone to discontinue using my software when he breaks the license agreement when he uses it in ways not covered by the license, just because he paid someone to write extensions for it.

Try to discuss that with SAP.

Re:But the TOS agreement

[shaitand]

'It creates real world economies that produce hordes of third-world sweat shops farming in areas where I'd like to just be enjoying myself with other gamers. Farmers suck.'

It creates real world economies that produce IMAGINARY hordes of third-world sweat shops. First, for every commercial gold farmer you encounter, you imagined you encounter fifty. The same is true of spots that are camped. 99.9999% of campers are regular players. Most farming is done by regular players who are trying to rack up enough gold to purchase an epic mount or just to cover the outrageous costs of repair in raids. As for the sweat shop, enough with your feigned indignation; gold farmers earn a pitiance HERE but that pitiance is a comfortable wage in their local economy. Personally I think they are irrelevant but if you really want to bring the moral impact of those workers into the situation then I think we have to look at the real situation. These people have what are good paying jobs and you want to take those jobs away.

'These things would be a rarity if not for real world value driving them.'

Maybe you have never played an MMORPG without any mentionable real world market for items and accounts. I have. Everything is still camped all the time, drops are a pain in the ass, there are players who will camp a spot and take a needed drop for no other reason than to screw up your game. 'Honest' players farming for 'legitimate' reasons are vast hordes that swallow any impact actual farmers have to nothing.

'I want everyone else to obey the rules as well.'

What do you care? If my actions don't have a negative effect on you then why do you want to have a negative effect on the way I want to play MY game?

'If you have more gold than I do, I don't want it to be because your mommy gives you a nice cash allowance.'

Why? What's it to you?

'I want it to be because you're all pasty faced from a lack of sunlight because you put the time in on the game.'

I don't really see a need to touch that one.

'The shittiest part, though, is the constant reminder that you can't even be allowed to agree with a group of folks on how to play a god damned game without cheating -- then go enjoy yourself.'

I fail to see why not? You go enjoy yourself, its as simple as choosing not to have your enjoyment be contingent upon how others are enjoying themselves.

'hose your enjoyment doing things to you and your GAME'

You still haven't come up with the part where someone is doing something to you. All you have established is that you are annoyed that someone else is having fun in a different way. Is it just that they aren't following the TOS? Would you suddenly be okay with gold trading if the TOS were changed?

'I don't enjoy playing tennis with losers who cheat.'

I would if the 'cheating' were comparable. Personally I don't consider anything that doesn't provide someone with a practical bottom line advantage over other players to be cheating. Your argument reminds me of boot camp in the military. You could get these wipes in the shop that you run over your boots and they would gleam but they were banned. They forced you to polish your boots the old fashioned way. They considered using the wipes to be cheating. Was there anything wrong with using wipes? No. Would I have been upset if someone managed to score and use the wipes? Of course not, I'm not a jealous asshole out to spoil it for everyone else. Besides the blame for the problem with the wipes wouldn't fall on the people who managed to get away with using them despite the rules, the blame falls on the ones who are making the bad rules.

'It affects me because I know about it.'

That is a choice. It doesn't affect you in any material way (in a real or virtual way). Especially on a game like WOW where there is no PvP worth mentioning and no consequence to PvP.

'Why should I enjoy sharing a game world with cheaters?'

Why should you care?

'Rationalize all you want with "I work hard out of the ga

Re:But the TOS agreement

[ajs]

First. There is no correlation between the TOS and fair play. Just as there is no correlation between obeying the law and doing what is right in the real world. There is a strong correlation in both cases. Correlations are not absolute. There's a strong correlation between how much I enjoy my work day and how much sleep I got, but I've had exceptions on both sides.

Buying and selling gold certainly doesn't hurt anyone. The claim is that it has a secondary impact, making an otherwise fun game into something that people view as their livelihood, reducing the amount of good will and sportsmanship in the game. I don't fully agree with that, but it's a valid argument.

The problem is the grind, not the people violating the TOS. Leveling should be more of an introductory tutorial to the game and your character and should last a couple days. Gold should fall off trees, and everyone should start at maximum skill in tradeskills. Why? Why should the game stop at a point that you choose? I'd like it to go on further, and I'm sure there are many others who feel the same. Why is a tradeskill interesting if everyone has the exact same proficiency in it? Why is buying something that's expensive interesting if everyone is filthy rich? Those might be fine things for a player-vs-player only game where all you want to do is log in and start fighting, but for a truly balanced PVE/PVP game, this simply doesn't work.

Re:But the TOS agreement

[Admiral Ag]

The difference is that World of Warcraft is a game set up for a specific purpose.

It's different from Second Life, and games which are not set up as contests. I think most people would agree that if you make something in Second Life, it's yours and you have the right to sell it for whatever you can get. Some people might be annoyed that you are richer and have nicer looking stuff than them, but it doesn't really interfere with the purpose of the game. People may enage in competitive consumption in Second Life, but it doesn't fundamentally compromise the purpose of the game. In fact RL item trading may make the game better. It's similar to Forza Motorsport 2, where players can sell cars with customized paint jobs. I wouldn't care if people could sell their paint schemes for real money as it wouldn't make their cars go faster or give them an unfair advantage in the game.

WoW has a different purpose. Character advancement is the main aim of the game. You need to do it to stay competitive at PvP and to be able to participate in a lot of the content. People who pay RL money for it claim an unfair advantage and are frustrating the purpose of the game.

This can be proven using Kant's test. What if everyone bought gold and characters from farmers? There would be no point to the game content for anyone except the farmers (similarly, the institution of property would collapse if everyone was permitted to steal). WoW would simply become a PvP game where everyone more or less had the same gear. The vast majority of the game content would become meaningless, and all it would be is a very expensive version of Counterstrike.

Re:But the TOS agreement

[Admiral Ag]

Because its a game and is supposed to reward skill and effort??

Let's play chess and allow some noob to buy his way to grand master. I'm sure that won't annoy all the other grand masters.

Seriously, you must be some kind of sociopath not to understand how cheating at games is morally wrong. Ask yourself: what if everyone did that? Would there still be a point to the game?

Re:But the TOS agreement

[klenwell]

You need to stop grinding your teeth whenever someone has a better lot than you and start worrying about YOUR fortune... As long as parts of the game are work rather than play, I am going to choose alternative methods that let me bypass them. Me doing so, doesn't affect you in the slightest.

Unfortunately, generations of sociobiological selection and primate evolution make sure that it does affect me (or would, if I played any of these games.) Look up E.O. Wilson.

It affects me for the same reason that the fate of Paris Hilton affects me: an adaptive intellectual curiosity about my relative social standing within the community (and the implications that holds for the perpetuation of my genes) hijacked by the forces of modern culture and amplified by modern technology.

Indeed, if it didn't affect me or anyone else, there'd be no market for MMORPGs in the first place. We'd all just stay at home all day complacently tending our rock gardens. Or, in my case, playing Sim City.

Years ago I read a very amusing article by Rebecca Mead in The New Yorker about the first online version of Ultima. It, and everything I've heard about these worlds since then -- up to and including SL, WOW, and now Eve Online -- seem to confirm her thesis: online worlds don't insulate us from the pettiness and absurdity of real life or the foibles and frailities of human nature -- they bring them into even sharper relief.

Re:But the TOS agreement

[geekoid]

"The claim is that it has a secondary impact, making an otherwise fun game into something that people view as their livelihood, reducing the amount of good will and sportsmanship in the game. I don't fully agree with that, but it's a valid argument."

if only someone could back that up with evidence.

Effectivly everyone who is interested in trade skill has it at max for their level anyways.

"Why is buying something that's expensive interesting if everyone is filthy rich?"

errr...why is the act of buying exciting at all? Not to mention money can't buy the best equipment anyways.

"Why should the game stop at a point that you choose?
Wht can't the game have a different stopping point for different people?

Re:But the TOS agreement

[Admiral Ag]

Yes, because someone whose username includes the Islamic name for Satan is likely to be a paragon of moral probity.

Re:But the TOS agreement

[veganboyjosh]

Let's play a game. It's called chess.

Later. Right now lets play Global Thermonuclear War.

Re:But the TOS agreement

[Admiral Ag]

I was hoping for one in whom the force was strong.

Props to you sir

Re:But the TOS agreement

[Miseph]

I think the real problem, then is that in WoW "skill" can be bought. If some total chess n00b managed to play at a grand master level and hold his own, nobody would bitch about how he "cheated" and skipped the years of practice and learning that everyone else to go through... they'd be shitting themselves over what a genius such a kid must be to overcome decades of lacked experience and hold their own against someone who has been considered a master since before the prodigy was born.

The difference is that you can't buy your way into being better at chess, you're just either good or not good and that's that. The pieces and rules are always the same, and the only thing you can really buy is a nicer looking and longer lasting set, but never one that is notably different to play with.

Maybe if WoW were a game based on skill, rather than on the amount of time devoted to playing, this problem wouldn't exist.

Re:But the TOS agreement

[shaitand]

'Because its a game and is supposed to reward skill and effort??'

Skill yes, effort is supposed to be built in. The more effort you expend the more skillful you can become. Grinding comes into play when the game implements some repetative task that you must spend hours performing and that essentially requires no skill.

'Seriously, you must be some kind of sociopath not to understand how cheating at games is morally wrong.'

Actually you must be right. I don't believe in either innate morality or innate wrongness. I also don't see how any action that doesn't give an edge over another player is cheating. Using programs like vent and websites with details on quests gives you an advantage in gameplay over other players and would certainly meet my definition of cheating but most of the same people whining about a purchased epic mount are happy to cheat in those ways.

'Let's play chess and allow some noob to buy his way to grand master.'

I fail to see why a grand master would care what people call the noob. It isn't as if they are going to stop having respect for his abilities and it isn't as if the noob is going to miraculously be able to compete with the grand master. After all, it is supposed to be about enjoying chess, not about earning titles or trophies.

'Would there still be a point to the game?'

Of course there would. At least as long as you don't put words in my mouth and setup a strawman. I never claimed rampant cheating of any sort wouldn't be bad for everyone and impact their gameplay. So saying that rampant cheating would do is a stawman argument. We aren't talking about rampant cheating of any kind, we are talking about activities that give no final advantage in the game over other players and gold transfers in particular.

So in that world it goes like this. We are friends. You have more time than money, I have more money than time. The result is that I only play a couple hours a week but I pay you to play my character along with yours. Our characters more or less advance at an equal pace, you have money to feed your kids, and when I play I have a character that is on par with everyone else so I can enjoy the game. When things like mounts come up and so forth, again, I pay you to do the grinding. I play enough to experience my character and learn how to play and to have realized that all quests are just reworded variations of the same handful of quests.

Now we are both lvl 70, we both know how to play our characters, we are both equiped. You have a little more money than you would have and I get to play the actual game that comes after all the grinding. Ahead of me is countless hours of enjoyment spent solving puzzles, working in massive efforts to defeat bosses and gain rare treasures. If I am good I can get a guild that doesn't punish infrequent players and if I can only spend one night a week playing, I get the same level of enjoyment during that time as everyone else. Your reward for playing for 7 nights where I only play one? That's easy, you get seven nights worth of enjoyment compared to my one. It isn't a job the time you spend on the game isn't an investment, it is supposed to the part you are enjoying. You aren't entitled to something more simply because you had fun for 8 hrs and I only had fun for 2.

Re:But the TOS agreement

[Admiral Justin]

Ahh, but in chess, you have a central authority.

If it were possible to do. FIDE could just step in and ban you from ever taking part in another FIDE approved tournament. Effectively removing the ability to make any form of recompense for the 'purchased' skill. This is because most of the big-paying events are under FIDE rules and/or regulations.

Re:But the TOS agreement

[shaitand]

'Why? Why should the game stop at a point that you choose?'

The game doesn't stop at the point I choose, the game STARTS at the point I defined. Skilling up in tradeskills, camping and grinding to raise gold for an epic mount, etc are all comparable to distributing armies and setting up the board before you can play a game of risk.

At the endgame portion (the real game) everyone is of roughly equal power, everyone is maxed in their tradeskill and abilities. Everything before that is just setting up the board so you can play the actual game that starts at that point.

Re:But the TOS agreement

[fractoid]

Right. $5bn will buy you a 20 megaton warhead and associated ICBM. The company/country with the most cash gets the most warheads, and ends up the least vaporised. This is an example of how the Real World sucks, and games are better. :P

Aside from the contention-with-farmers issue, the problem is that gear does have a large effect on games such as WoW. Take one kid who plays after school, he's just hit lvl 70 and in instance blues and greens, farming for his flying mount. Now the rich bastid down the road (who's also just hit 70) gets 20k gold for christmas - instantly he's kitted out with an epic flying mount and a full set of epic crafted gear. When poor kid runs into rich kid he'll get creamed unless rich kid really really sucks. This is not fun for poor kid.

On the flip side, there's then me, the young software developer, who gets to play 2-3 hours a night but spends most of that time leveling alts because that's what his girlfriend wants to do. He gets maybe 3 hours a week to play on his mage, who's not going to hit 70 for another month or two, and when he does he'll have crappy gear because he can rarely commit to the block of time required to run a dungeon. He's gonna run into poor kid and rich kid, and even poor kid will have better gear because instead of doing homework, poor kid is raiding. In this case software dev will beat rich kid because rich kid can't play his class, but will still have trouble competing with poor kid. How is it bad for software dev to upgrade his gear by spending some of his copious hard-earned RL cash in lieu of spending his limited playing time?

Just for clarification, I've never bought gold and never will, because it'd be cheating and I hate cheaters.

Re:But the TOS agreement

[Eskarel]

Let's start off, I don't buy gold, nor do I sell gold. I never have, and I probably never will.

That said, buying gold doesn't cause inflation, because it doesn't create more gold. The only thing that creates more gold is time. True having people farming gold add players to the game which adds time to the game, but the amount of gold created on a server is still directly proportional to the number of total hours spent on that server by all its players. If you don't believe that try rolling on a brand new server that didn't have allowed transfers, nothing is worth anything because no one has any money to spend on it. Someone buying or selling gold can't change that.

In an MMO inflation is caused when the rate at which money leaves the system can't keep up with the rate at which money enters the system(repair bills, item purchases, AH fees, etc can't keep up with the influx of cash from drops and vendor sales). This is a problem with game design not with RMT.

If Blizzard started creating gold in exchange for cash, that would cause inflation and ruin the economy, but they don't, and they won't.

As for RP, that's not a problem with RMT, it's a problem wtih player behavior, there's no reason you can't have RMT and proper player behavior. People not RPing on RP servers has existed since way before the RMT system existed, so you can't really blame it on this company.

Your deep pockets argument doesn't work either because the game works the opposite way to real life. MMO's, and WoW in particular rewards time. You have more free time than I do, and so you get to participate in WoW on a level I can't, and even with RMT never will.

I have more money than time, you have more time than money, RMT offers an opportunity for you to exchange something you have a lot of for something you don't have a lot of and vice versa. This is a win win situation. Even with RMT deep pockets will never make you obsolete, because as I said before, the gold supply is directly proportional to the amount of time spent on the server, someone will always have to spend that time(people like you) before anyone can spend their money.

Re:But the TOS agreement

[NeoOokami]

There's a world of difference between congress debating taxing Second Life's currency, which is converted back and forth into US dollars; and people selling virtual items and gold in WoW which is designed to be a closed system from the start.

Re:But the TOS agreement

[Lemmy Caution]

Could a game legitimately insist that you not allow your little brother or your girlfriend to play your character?

Here's the thing: there are all sorts of reasons to do things in a virtual world. I could send you a magic imaginary sword because you're my friend, because you're my girlfriend, because I owe you a favor, because I owe you 10 bucks and we agree to write off the debt if I send you my magic sword, because I like the name you chose for your character, and on and on. What that a priori hostility on RMT really is, is a claim that there are certain reasons you cannot send people your magic imaginary sword.

I think that's ultimately the problem: really, as long as the software supports something (that is, sending something to someone) it becomes none of anyone else's business what our motivations are. As long as it is possible to send gold to someone without a game-enforced quid-pro-quo, it really should be no one's business why the gold is sent.

Re:But the TOS agreement

[Anonymous Coward]

Ahead of me is countless hours of enjoyment spent solving puzzles, working in massive efforts to defeat bosses and gain rare treasures

Um, I thought you were paying other people to play. Now you say you want to "solve puzzles", defeat bosses", and "gain treasure".

You can't do that if someone else is playing for you.

Re:But the TOS agreement

[Lemmy Caution]

Grinding isn't skill. Grinding is brute time expenditure, and so is farming.

So it's deep pockets versus "deep clock." You have a lot of spare time. Others don't. Some people without spare time may actually be excellent players: attentive, well-organized, good planners, excellent reflexes, and communication skills. They just don't have time to grind.

Is it fair that some people have more money? Well, is it fair that some people have more time?

Re:But the TOS agreement

[shaitand]

You seem to be confusing the grinding with the playing that comes after. There is a point where that grinding ends and playing begins.

Re:But the TOS agreement

[Pofy]

>Let's play a game. It's called chess. Now, let's change
>the rules so that either of us can buy back any piece we
>lose for 20 dollars.

That would require to change the rules of the chess game itself. In MMO games, trading items is allready perfectly legal and typically have built in facilities for it. There is no change of rules needed. The fact that players can interact In addition outside the game has nothing to do with the game itself.

Re:But the TOS agreement

[Pofy]

>but they do have the right to say if you want to play
>our game then you may not accept money from someone outside
>of the game for in game services/items/whatever because it's
>a private game on private servers, and the TOS you agree to
>when you play the game.

Sure, they "have the right" to tell what people can do IN the game. What people (consumers) do with the rest of their life outside their game is not their "right" to tell. Exchanging items and/or gold between characters in the games are perfectly legal and OK and the games even encourage it through several ingame trading functionalities.

Re:But the TOS agreement

[WNight]

Not an asshole, an idiot. You see this shit going on and Blizzard lets it get in the way of your gaming experience. You blame the players, not the maker of the lame game. If Blizzard could figure out proper instancing (I will show them, yes I am *that* smart) you wouldn't be denied access to a resource because someone else is using it.

Hell, they could just try to write a game where you can't camp spawns, but no, much easier to blame the players.

How do you know those areas are crowded with gold sellers instead of just pushy guilds or demanding players who won't share? Perhaps if they could all just buy an item or two they wouldn't go insane when they miss their drop, ala Cloudsong.

Really, you're just proof that unhappy people can be made happy by giving them an opportunity to pick on the masses. You're the type who keeps IRC going, just hoping for ops to be able to control those rule-breakers... Just sit back and let other people play the game. They may have more adjectives on their magic weapon, they might emit a brighter glow, but your character remains unchanged and you should be able to continue having just as much fun as before without concerning yourself with them. After all, theoretically it's playing the game that's fun.

Enjoy your second daily grind.

Re:But the TOS agreement

[WNight]

So play against the newb and beat him, rub his nose in it. Problem solved and lulz for all!

I honestly think you're the sick fuck for thinking that you need to rate yourself against others in a game. Also fairly dense for picking a lame game (not chess) where people could simply buy results.

It's not like they're cheating at a contest and taking an unfair prize though. They're simply choosing to play less of one of the crappiest "games" around.

Re:But the TOS agreement

[WNight]

Oh god, this is comedy gold. You're worried that you won't do well in an interview to be allowed to play a game with other people because you haven't ground heavily enough to keep up with the item buyers. And you do this for fun?

A real game would be playable at whatever level you were at, and fun to play.

It doesn't disrupt me in games that someone is twice my level. Should I interview them to find out if they bought the character so that I would know to get mad?

Re:But the TOS agreement

[WNight]

Which is it? Are gold-buyers crafty geniuses, buffing already extreme PvP monsters, or imbeciles who can't control their ill-gotten character? Can you tell them because they're so much better, or so much worse?

Either way, why don't you PvP someone your own size, regardless of level, and take advantage of clueless newbs with loads of cash? How does this ruin *your* game? Not some ladder of scores that only the dickless care about, but your actual gameplay.

Re:But the TOS agreement

[WNight]

The only problem is that you have a choice. Play some crap like WoW that's mainly based on the grind, or you could play a real game.

If you stay in WoW despite this you reduce the incentive for a company to offer an actually fun game.

It's bad for you to dump your cash into a travesty like Blizzard while they shit on games and gamers. Like buying an MS product and funding (whatever your view on OSS) a pathetic patent battle that will hurt the industry.

Re:But the TOS agreement

[WNight]

You're right, but that doesn't mean we should cater to this insane desire for self-rating.

The people who need this social boost though, are the same who hang out on IRC to get ops. Long ago ops stopped being useful for any technical reason (chans are safe, /ignore works, etc) but it's still traded as a symbol of the in crowd. Nobody needs to kick a griefer anymore, but everyone is prepped to kick anyone who doesn't suck up properly.

These self-appointed fairness monitors are the real problem. If they'd all choke and die simultaneously the real problem would be solved. Are there any studies about the long-term effects of shattering these people's world-views (by not forcing others into the rankings they desire to make)? Maybe by taking some self-righteous jerk who declares that only his method of item acquisition is truly fair, and buying a better item for everyone except him...

Re:But the TOS agreement

[WNight]

Rather, if everyone had mostly the same gear it'd be fun. As is, it *is* like counterstrike, where the people playing the longest have the best stuff.

Re:But the TOS agreement

[WNight]

Good idea, if they're sued by the initial dealer for violating the shrink-wrap license on the bag of drugs which limited resale unlawfully, it'll be exactly the same issue.

Are you trying to troll and just very bad, or can you really not think this through yourself?

Re:But the TOS agreement

[Anonymous Coward]

That's not exactly the point he was making. It has nothing to do with legality, since if someone gets caught selling gold, they won't be prosecuted. They will instead just be booted off of their account.

In other words, you pay for the account and agree to their TOS, so you play by their rules. This has nothing to do with legal issues

Re:But the TOS agreement

[klenwell]

You're right, but that doesn't mean we should cater to this insane desire for self-rating.

Except that by understanding this insane desire, the state, officials, sysops, ordinary citizens, etc. can exploit it to positive social ends -- a point perfectly illustrated by the "red hair dye" solution in the world of Ultima Mead writes about in her article. If that doesn't epitomize the insane desire for gratuituous markers of social status, well, then I guess we can always go get in line a week ahead of time for an iphone.

Of course, more than likely, it will be exploited to negative social ends. But in recognizing it, you can at least protect yourself, which is what I guess the GP's point was.

But you're right about self-appointed fairness monitors: as far as I can tell, "this social boost" is what serotonin is all about and there have been some interesting things written about the effect social positioning has on its release.

Re:But the TOS agreement

[shaitand]

'Maybe if WoW were a game based on skill, rather than on the amount of time devoted to playing, this problem wouldn't exist.'

But it is, at a point. That part where you are leveling up and paying for mounts and so forth isn't the game, that is just setting up the board. The game starts after that. When you are at the maximum level with an epic mount, your skills are maxed, your character is respec'd to perfection, that is when the game begins and it is about skill. Why? Because everyone else at the point is already max'd on everything as well and because the game hardly ends at that point. There are no puzzles or mysteries involved in the things that come before that, only a time sink and grinding. At that point you can continue on to raids and what PvP wow has and the game starts being about skill and having fun and stops being about how much time you have put in.

Re:But the TOS agreement

[shaitand]

'Also fairly dense for picking a lame game (not chess) where people could simply buy results.'

They can buy results up to a point. There is a point in the game where everyone is 'maxed out' on all their character stats. The game continues at that point, it requires massive group efforts and is about nothing but skill. All the crap before that is just practice that teaches you the rules and strategies. Rules are fine but don't take several hundred hours to learn and the strategies all change for the end game anyway.

Re:But the TOS agreement

[Dirk the Daring]

I can't tell if this in response to me because of the new format, but I'll respond as if it was... What I said is what would happen as gold selling becomes more commonplace. It's why companies like Blizzard fight it. I can't speak for other servers, but mine is a fairly quiet server-- and gold selling seems to be under control. So I don't see the effects above. I can't speak for other servers. Maybe they have these problems, maybe they don't. And, like I said, I don't directly care if you bought stuff for yourself. If you geared yourself exactly the same as me for $100 on ebay, walked up to me and started mocking me, I wouldn't really care. The problem is when the scale gets larger. If a larger portion of the population bought the suit, that becomes the new "norm", and people who want to play the game as a game instead of spending money get pushed out-- or they have to turn their game playing into work. Then it stops being a game, it stops being fun. And, for your comedy gold, I stop playing. "Should I interview them to find out if they bought the character so that I would know to get mad?" That's really your choice. If you want an honest, in-game answer-- if I'm participating in an event that is going to cost me a lot of time and in-game money (say, a difficult raid instance), I want to make sure the people I bring with me are capable of doing their part. Why? It's not fun if one person is causing the group to fail for no good reason-- sacrificing 24 people's fun for one. That didn't answer the question directly, so now I will: I wouldn't refuse someone a position because they bought their account. What is needed are people who enjoy doing their best, enjoy the company of the fellow group, and work with them to accomplish a common goal, like with any team game or sport. People who match stick around.

Re:But the TOS agreement

[Toad-san]

"The problem is the grind, not the people violating the TOS. Leveling should be more of an introductory tutorial to the game and your character and should last a couple days. Gold should fall off trees, and everyone should start at maximum skill in tradeskills. As long as parts of the game are work rather than play, I am going to choose alternative methods that let me bypass them. Me doing so, doesn't affect you in the slightest."

The value of the object, the gold, the skill is because it _was_ hard to get. All values in games are purely artificial. Ever seen a rich kid, given everything they wanted? Any comments on THEIR value system? The word "spoiled brat" comes to mind, but that might just be dating myself. However a spoiled brat in a MMOG is no more pleasant than one in the real world.

When I worked hard, and you didn't, to gain the same objective .. you have just destroyed the value of that objective (to me) .. and you've harmed me.

The fact that I'm a damned fool for putting any value at all on such a thing is beside the point. It had enough value to YOU as well, for you to pay real money for it. But since you've now effectively devalued my copy of it .. you've harmed me.

"That part where you grind and work hard for something in the game to earn it and get pissed when I buy it is not you feeling the effects. That is just you being an asshole."

Now that's a spoiled brat talking. I felt the effects of your buying it; you devalued what I worked hard for.

Who's the asshole?

Re:But the TOS agreement

[Miseph]

So why have the tedious and boring first part at all? If the real fun begins after experience and gold are irrelevant, then I can't see what purpose either experience or gold really serve except to make the game less fun and less interesting.

This is the problem I always have with MMOGs. It's why I've never even wanted to play WoW (ooh, EverQuest with updated graphics and a slightly different setting... where can I not sign up for the same thing all over again).

Re:But the TOS agreement

[52Cards]

This bank argument is weak here. If a bank pisses you off.. you can withdraw all your money and take it to another friendlier bank. If Blizzard pisses you off, you CAN"T take that character or any of its possessions with you, besides... where would you go? None of these games are interchangeable in that nature...

would be nice if they were though.

Re:But the TOS agreement

[shaitand]

I will summarize your post to this statement.

'I felt the effects of your buying it; you devalued what I worked hard for.'

That is the point, we are talking about a game. Not a hobby, not a job, a game. By definition it is supposed to be all play and no work. If you 'worked hard' at something in a game then that something needs to be fixed.

Of course buying something is hardly devaluing it. Buying is a recognition of value. The work you put into x achieve is valued at whatever I just paid someone who did the same work. I worked hard for the money I used to buy it, that money is precious to me and I certainly don't see how your accomplishment was devalued.

Last but not least the value for the accomplishment itself is reduced when you consider that everyone in the game achieves those accomplishments. With my proposed fix to the game you wouldn't have had to struggle to get that nonsense either, you would be able skip right to the fun part.

Stop, take a deep breath and let the work mentality that has been driven into you slip away. You are ENTITLED to enjoy a game on an equal basis with everyone else WITHOUT having to work for it.

Re:But the TOS agreement

[shaitand]

'So why have the tedious and boring first part at all? If the real fun begins after experience and gold are irrelevant, then I can't see what purpose either experience or gold really serve except to make the game less fun and less interesting.'

Partly it is historical. These games all owe their lineage to Dungeons and Dragons and D&D has leveling and money. What people seem to forget is that these games aren't D&D. In D&D the idea was to make the game as realistic as possible within the confines of a fantasy world. The fun was in being able to BELIEVE in the setting, the be afraid when your character was in danger, and to make you act as your character would act. Leveling was a way to quanitify the knoweldge and experience your character gained as he progressed in the world. Gold served the same purpose, it provided both a reward to motivate and a challenge to add realism.

WOW and other MMORPG's are NOT D&D. Nobody believes in the world (or wants to), nobody is really roleplaying here. The exciting part is not the realism but the interaction with others.

Why do the gamemakers continue using these concepts despite the fact that they don't make sense for these games? It is a proven formula and that sort of simple challenge and reward system is addictive. At every point you find you have already put so much effort into it and the next objective is just a little bit farther...

Re:But the TOS agreement

[WNight]

In other words, you'd play with anyone of an equivalent skill level?

Seems reasonable then. No need to give up your fun just because someone else bypassed the line and enjoys himself, you just may not be at his level (or maybe are far ahead) and don't need to compete either way.

Obviously there's a ranking system to avoid a new lvl70 from fighting the toughest, so doesn't this reflect their (theoretical) skill? If I buy stuff that beats yours, you wouldn't be tricked into PvPing me, would you?

Re:But the TOS agreement

[WNight]

Or, by recognizing it you can dance all over other people's attempts to pigeon hole everyone else. If they have a l33t sword, buy one for everyone. Perhaps it's mean, but anyone who can only be happy by having something better isn't going to improve the world for themselves or anyone else anyway.

Can you link to this UO thing you mention, it sounds good but "ultima mead red hair dye" didn't find anything.

Personally, I think people who monetize/exploit scarcity are sick. I realize it's financially the win, but when you enforce a false scarcity it always involves fascist and unrealistic laws.

Re:But the TOS agreement

[WNight]

Well, skill and items...

That's the reason WoW's design blows. What possible reason is there for everyone to be able to max their stats at the same place? In any other game there'd be a surplus of skills so that while powerful people might tend to similarity they wouldn't be identical.

While I dislike Eve Online (dishonesty from the makers, grinding) I like its skill tree. Too large for anyone to ever have all of and not based on hours in game.

Re:But the TOS agreement

[klenwell]

Can you link to this UO thing you mention?

I can -- now that I got the author's name correct. It was actually written by Elizabeth Kolbert and titled "Pimps and Dragons." No longer on the New Yorker's site, but found a copy here:

Pimps and Dragons

This article from Wired is also interesting:

The Unreal Estate Boom

As far as post-scarcity economies, isn't that Cory Doctorow's speciality? (Haven't read the novel in question -- nor remember it's name off-hand.) Another perspective, from the Sweepers Calendar:

As soon as the artificial problem of scarcity is finally eradicated, economics will immediately turn to the dangerous problem of superabundance. States will fall into turmoil as people riot for want of absolutely nothing. And the leisure class will be distinguished not by its conspicuous exhibition of affluence, but by a fashionable hint of the mildest deprivation.

Re:But the TOS agreement

[Dirk the Daring]

PvP in World of Warcraft is probably different than the system that you are used to.

In World of Warcraft, there's three ways to PvP:
    * Battlegrounds/Arena (prepared fighting)
    * World PvP (unprepared fighting)
    * Duels (practice fighting)

In BG/A, you can fight against either side, but the rules are set. (for example, 5v5 in a 100x100 forest) There is no interference from the normal world-- it's like playing a game of football.

World PvP is where you run into each other in the game world. In general, one side is less prepared than the other. You may only fight against the opposing faction (Alliance vs Horde)

The last is only against your own side, 1v1.

In none of these cases does it matter -to me- if someone has bought their character. Why not?

Arena/BG-- I expect anyone I fight to be geared to the teeth anyway. People don't generally go into prepared fights when they know they'll lose. Because of this, the purchased characters blend in with the non-purchased characters, the only difference is that the purchased characters have less practice, and will be easier to defeat.

World PvP-- If I'm on the prepared side, I'm just looking at a tougher fight. No problems there, I started it. If I'm the one being attacked, well, personally I have no issues. I can see how newer players might, though.

Duels-- Duels are just silly practice. I have nothing to gain by winning or losing them, so really, a tougher opponent is to my advantage.

Now, I can see why someone who PvPs to excess would care-- but someone who does will know the best players on their server, and will know when an account has been bought, and act accordingly.

I can also see why a new player would care-- getting smashed by someone who bought their character would be no fun. Interestingly, in WoW, they have no way of knowing. Communication is cut off between the two factions, so you would have to make an effort outside the game to figure things out, and at that point you're putting more effort into the game than a defenseless new guy.

---

back to your other point-- no, I don't care if someone buys their way past me in content. There are people who got past me in content simply by spending 24/7 banging their head on the content until they won-- am I bitter at them because I cant' play 24/7? no.

However, I stand by my original point-- when the purchasing of gold affects my play, that's when I care.

Re:But the TOS agreement

[ajs]

At the endgame portion (the real game) everyone is of roughly equal power, everyone is maxed in their tradeskill and abilities. Everything before that is just setting up the board so you can play the actual game that starts at that point. Ah, so there's a particular part of the game you happen to like, and you want all other parts of the game removed to increase your enjoyment... No thanks. I just started 3 new characters on the opposite faction from the one I'd been playing. I'm having great fun leveling them, building up a reserve of money from scratch, gaining trade skills from trainers I never new existed, etc. It's a lot of fun. If you don't stop to enjoy about 50-80% of the game, I'm very sorry for you, but the solution is not to remove it.

summary

[potatoeater]

For those unwilling to read, they essentially said: "We think it's certain behaviors such as spamming, bot farming, hacking and duping that cause the most concern." and then, "We think it's certain behaviors such as spamming, bot farming, hacking and duping that cause the most concern." and then, "We think it's certain behaviors such as spamming, bot farming, hacking and duping that cause the most concern." and then, "We think it's certain behaviors such as spamming, bot farming, hacking and duping that cause the most concern." and one more time, "We think it's certain behaviors such as spamming, bot farming, hacking and duping that cause the most concern."

Re:summary

[k_187]

Indeed, cutting through the marketing bullshit you get "We never touch the in-game items, so we're better than IGE"

Re:summary

[doombringerltx]

The Sparter interview had this phrase 30-40% less than interviews with professional gold sellers

Re:summary

[moderatorrater]

Their comments are made even more worthless by the fact that they have other sites advertising on theirs. On that page they have IGE, mmorpg-shop, and others. Gamer to gamer my ass, they're just a clearing house for everyone, and gamers can also participate if they'd like.

Re:summary

[dcollins]

Mod this up, y'all. About the 5th time I read this talking-point script I wrote off the whole interview as complete corporate marketing bullshit.

It's really funny that the headline says, "The response from these executives should lay to rest for you the issue of whether this was a marketing ploy or not." I guess I should've known even then that the exact opposite woyld happen -- hadn't considered it before, but now 100% convinced that it's complete marketing ploy bullshit and zero useful content.

Hypnosis not working here, marketers, bad doggies.

Re:summary

[vimh42]

Don't you mean "This is Chewbacca...

+1 Funny

[Applekid]

I like how they're creating a system to make it easier for users to engage in conduct that the publishers don't want to happen, but still want the publishers' support to help guard against buyer/seller fraud.

I like how they say how bad bots and exploits are, but they have no in game method to watch it.

A startup company shouldn't start with the double-talk until the actually start being successful.

Re:+1 Funny

[profplump]

The publishers only don't want that conduct to occur because they think they can make more money if they prevent/disallow it. If it became clear that publishers could make more money with such conduct their objections would stop and the conduct would be encouraged.

Re:+1 Funny

[Synn]

If publishers don't want it to happen, then they need to code their games in such a way where it's not possible. Otherwise, the reality of the situation is that people are going to do it so they better make sure it happens in a way that doesn't harm their game.

As it is now, publishers are pretty much burying their heads in the sand on the issue. SOE being the exception, as they allow cash to money/item trades in game on some servers in EQ2.

Re:M$ UR DAYZ R NUMBURD

[utopianfiat]

Excellent work, welcome to the GNAA!

Dear MMOG RTM sellers....

[Mashiki]

Go away. You ruin what little closed world experience exists in these games as it is by allowing people to cheat their way up.

While I'm happy you feel the need to roll around in large wads of money, I don't feel the need to become beholden to you when you drive up market costs so much that everyone is forced to buy from you.

Re:Dear MMOG RTM sellers....

[Anonymous Coward]

The problem is, they're just like spammers. I suspect the number of people who actually buy and sell on these things will be very low compared to the actual subscription numbers for the afflicted games, but it only takes a tiny fraction of the playerbase to make these guys a profit and keep them going.

Somewhere out there is a tiny army of boneheads who keep buying garbage from spammers and keeping them in business, so we all have to suffer. This will be the same way. Most people will want to play the game legitimately, but there will be a tiny army of people who will engage in this shifty behavior who will help to ruin the game for everyone.

It only takes one gold-buying twink with uber-items he didn't have to develop the skill to earn in a close p2p matchup to ruin it for the whole team, so the next time some annoying kid with 500 gold worth of elite items does something stupid and gets the whole p2p team wiped out, be sure to take a moment to send these people here a very nice thank you letter for their diligent work in making sure that your enjoyment of the game was vastly less than it should have been.

Re:Dear MMOG RTM sellers....

[Anonymous Coward]

It only takes one gold-buying twink with uber-items he didn't have to develop the skill to earn in a close p2p matchup to ruin it for the whole team, so the next time some annoying kid with 500 gold worth of elite items does something stupid and gets the whole p2p team wiped out

By p2p I assume you mean pvp (player vs player)? If so, then it's just a scary dream you're having. Outside of just simple "fun" no commitment PvP, competitive PvP won't have the random uber-twink who bought his account off EBay kind of thing. Those people are playing with others they know and trust. Not just random PuGs.

Re:Dear MMOG RTM sellers....

[MalleusEBHC]

Go away. You ruin what little closed world experience exists in these games as it is by allowing people to cheat their way up.

While I'm happy you feel the need to roll around in large wads of money, I don't feel the need to become beholden to you when you drive up market costs so much that everyone is forced to buy from you. The companies are only there because there is a demand for their services. As long as there is demand, there will always be real money trading. Unless a company like Blizzard finds a way to eliminate the demand (by redesigning their game) or by eliminating the ability to trade in-game assets for real money (all but impossible), there will always be people who will conduct such trades, be it through a large company or in an individualized black market of sorts.

Re:Dear MMOG RTM sellers....

[Mashiki]

Of course they are there because of a demand of a service. So are drug dealers, and crack whores but not everyone goes out for those services either do they. Blizzards solution is pretty simple to put them out of business actually: Repeatable daily quests. The average person can make between Skettis and Ogrilia 70g alone. Toss in the Netherwing Quests, it's over 100g. Barring server errors it's repeatable two to three times a day, counting upto 340g per day.

Tell me, how is gold in short supply?

sorry...

[cosmocain]

...but i dozed off in most of the lengthy marketing-blurbs.

"is it legal?" - "well, blablablabla cooperate with developers ... blablabla...partners". translated: actually no, but if we offer some of our profit in exchange, it might get.

sometimes i suppose those lengthy and intentionally cryptic answers are exactly uttered exactly for having the reader get a nap. disinformation strategies. duh... ;)

Re:sorry...

[nomadic]

"is it legal?" - "well, blablablabla cooperate with developers ... blablabla...partners". translated: actually no, but if we offer some of our profit in exchange, it might get.

Eh, under US contract law it's not "illegal" to violate a contract, so it's not like they're breaking the law. MMORPG publishers might be able to sue them under breach of contract though.

Re:sorry...

[CastrTroy]

Well, it's still illegal. It's not a criminal offence, but it is illegal. Just like speeding isn't a criminal offence, but you can still be ticketed for speeding. The law consists of many thing, including the criminal code, highway traffic act, and many other things. Otherwise, why do you think so many "law"yers get involved in making contracts.

Re:sorry...

[nomadic]

Well, it's still illegal. It's not a criminal offence, but it is illegal. Just like speeding isn't a criminal offence, but you can still be ticketed for speeding.

No, illegal implies that you're violating a law; speeding is illegal, and is a criminal offense, it's just at the lower end of the spectrum, so it turns out to be a very lightly punished misdemeanor.

In the US legal system, the modern philosophy regarding commercial contracts was basically developed in first half of the twentieth century by a group of judges practicing mainly in the northeast (Cardozo being the primary architect). This philosophy was that sometimes it makes more sense business-wise to breach a contract than to keep it, and if that's the case you should be allowed to do that, as long as the other side is compensated for the breach. They basically took away any legal or moral stigma from not doing what you contracted to do, if you had a good excuse.

Re:sorry...

[CastrTroy]

I guess things work a little differently south of the border (I'm in Canada), but I thought the whole criminal/non-criminal offense thing worked the same way. When you're caught for speeding, you don't get a criminal record, because it's not a criminal offense. Also, breaking a contract, while not against criminal law, is against civil law. Civil law is part of the law, just as traffic offenses and city bylaws are included in the law. There is also quite a bit of moral stigma with breaking contracts. Try becoming a contractor (like a plumber), and then break all your contracts, when the job is only half done, and see how much business you get.

Re:sorry...

[Kalriath]

No, illegal implies that you're violating a law; speeding is illegal, and is a criminal offense, it's just at the lower end of the spectrum, so it turns out to be a very lightly punished misdemeanor. illegal: prohibited by law or by official or accepted rules; "an illegal chess move"
wordnet.princeton.edu/perl/webwn

Re:sorry...

[nomadic]

illegal: prohibited by law or by official or accepted rules; "an illegal chess move" wordnet.princeton.edu/perl/webwn

...and it's not prohibited by law, or official or accepted rules. There is absolutely nothing inherently illegal about breaching a contract. Black's Law Dictionary lists the definition of illegal as "illegal, adj. Forbidden by law; unlawful ".

RMT is the natural result of the grind

[dave1791]

I look at it this way, if people are willing to spend money to NOT experience part of the game, then there is a fundamental design flaw in the game. As long as MMO designers use the grind because it makes their world sticky, there will be RMT. Some people have more money than time or more money than patience. I'd not hesitate to buy a character and skip the grind myself, though I don't play on MMOs because they are centered on... surprise... the grind.

So if publishers really want to stop RMT, they should look at the cause and not the symptom.

Re:RMT is the natural result of the grind

[Crazy Man on Fire]

I agree with you, but I'm curious what other system of merit/advancement is possible aside from "the grind." I don't play any of these games myself, but it seems inevitable that you have to work your way up in one way or another. What are the alternatives?

Re:RMT is the natural result of the grind

[Anonymous Coward]

Thats like sayying the only reason people use wall hacks in shooters is because of those pesky walls. Get rid of the walls and there won't be a problem, right?

U R a stupid stupid stupid stupid.

Re:RMT is the natural result of the grind

[CastrTroy]

Put the quests in a proper increasing difficulty such that the experience you gain from doing one quest is enough to let you move onto the next quest. Think about it this way. Compare Dragon Warrior 1, with Zelda 1 (just for simplicity's sake). In DW, you have to spend hours killing slimes and other lame enemies (aka killing boards in the woods) in order to get your character to be good enough to actually complete the quest part of the game (finding weapons, items, and killing boss characters). On the other hand, in Zelda, the Items you get from completing the first dungeon, is usually all you need when you move onto the second dungeon. The fun part is going through the levels, and beating the boss characters. Not spending hours killing the exact same enemies over and over again. Make it so that you don't have to kill the enemies over and over again.

Re:RMT is the natural result of the grind

[nomadic]

I don't play any of these games myself, but it seems inevitable that you have to work your way up in one way or another.

Not really. Play at whatever level is fun for you. I never really played these kinds of games myself, but I remember back in my MUD days I had the most fun as a mid-level, kind of just off on my own exploring. Nobody says you have to reach level 60 or 70 or whatever the top level is these days.

Re:RMT is the natural result of the grind

[Crazy Man on Fire]

This makes sense, but isn't part of the point of these MMORPG's that they are very open ended? I would imagine that this is a large part of the appeal of these games. Zelda isn't open ended at all. There's a very defined path through the game. While Zelda is a great game, I can't imagine playing it online with millions of other people.

Re:RMT is the natural result of the grind

[Anonymous Coward]

Wish I had mod points, this is exactly the problem and it is unfortunately completely ignored by MMO developers.

Re:RMT is the natural result of the grind

[dave1791]

As an amateur virtual world designer (http://rpg-gamerz.com/smf/index.php), this is something I've pondered a lot and don't really have an answer, but I can say a couple of things. 1- you don't see RMT in smaller, closed knit communities such as with NWN. Everyone knows everyone, so it is almost like a guild in itself. This helps, but people tend to like the eye candy of the big commercial worlds. 2- and on the RP servers, part of the advancement (titles, housing, etc) is GM granted based on the players roleplay history with that character. Only a very small percentage of MMO players are roleplayers, so this is not an answer. 3-Have you ever plyed a FPS online? I have and I get massacred every time. Everyone's toon is the same and yet there is a clear "level" difference - among the players.

My hunch is that MUDs/PWs/MMOs/VWs, whatever you want to call them, need to take a page from the FPS rulebook and make player capital (skill) more important than avatar capital (Edward Castronova's term for levels, gold, gear, etc.). Make the game something that takes years to master, but that years is not spent simply leveling up a toon and I think you have a recipe.

Re:RMT is the natural result of the grind

[morari]

Some people have more money than time or more money than patience. More money than brains, perhaps. They're already paying a monthly fee just to have the "privilege" of playing the game (i.e. grinding), only to spend more money to avoid grinding.

Re:RMT is the natural result of the grind

[Crazy Man on Fire]

The player capital vs avatar capital distinction is very interesting. However, isn't avatar capital the whole point of RPG's? How hard is it to navigate around and press the "attack" or "magic" or "run away" button? I think you're on to a good idea, but it seems like a very difficult problem to solve in a way that will yield an enjoyable gaming experience.

Re:RMT is the natural result of the grind

[CastrTroy]

But then they have to make lots of quests with varying difficulty. When you're playing these kinds of games, there's only 2 things you can do. That is, complete a quest, or kill boars in the forest. Make the game have enough quests at each difficultly level such that you don't have walk in circles killing the same enemy over and over again just to have enough experience. Make it interesting to obtain the experience, and the game will be fun. If you look at just about any other RPG out there, they are all very linear. So all Zelda does is provide the same kind of game without "the grind". I haven't played any MMORPGs, but what about them makes them so "open ended"? Is there still not quests you have to complete, and you have to do them in increasing difficulty? Maybe there's more side quests and stuff, but I still don't see why they couldn't completely get rid of "the grind".

Re:RMT is the natural result of the grind

[syntaxglitch]

I agree with you, but I'm curious what other system of merit/advancement is possible aside from "the grind." I don't play any of these games myself, but it seems inevitable that you have to work your way up in one way or another. What are the alternatives?

The alternative is actual player skill, not character "skill". You can't go on eBay and buy hours of practice; if that was possible I'd play far more musical instruments than I do. The problem with that is it requires the game be less mindless and to actually punish players somehow for failure, neither of which is popular with the MMORPG player demographic as a whole. Current MMORPGs cater to people who want a fantasy world where "working harder, not smarter" is how you get ahead. (Well, and to people who want the social interaction aspect... but that's a mostly orthogonal issue to gameplay)

Re:RMT is the natural result of the grind

[Sage Gaspar]

Yep, and PvP is a big part of this. Age of Conan and Warhammer, the two upcoming MMOs getting the most attention atm, both feature PvP heavily. The bottom line is that there are not enough content designers in the world to satiate the MMO appetite for content while keeping it at a high level challenge without grinds and timesinks. If you pit players against each other in fun, balanced combat with some decent goals system on top of it, you'll have a winner. I've played maps in my favorite FPS upwards of 24 hours each. When the content is other players each game evolves differently no matter if you're doing the same thing for the hundredth time. The problem is that PvP in games so far has tended to either be a sideshow or implemented poorly. There aren't many people interested in being rolled over by gank squads ten levels higher. The fun of advancement needs to be balanced with the fun of PvP combat insofar as newbies not being cannon fodder until they manage to grind up levels in seclusion somewhere.

Similarly you mentioned roleplaying. That's another kind of MMO player that needs less from devs. No one's really provided a mass market game for them except on the lowest level... I guess SWG was the closest and they're working on it more. But take something like the SWG engine, make PvP the central part of the gameplay, keep adding in more tools for people to play in their guild towns and stuff, and you got a cheap, low maintenance MMO that will attract a good amount of people.

Re:RMT is the natural result of the grind

[syntaxglitch]

The player capital vs avatar capital distinction is very interesting. However, isn't avatar capital the whole point of RPG's? How hard is it to navigate around and press the "attack" or "magic" or "run away" button? I think you're on to a good idea, but it seems like a very difficult problem to solve in a way that will yield an enjoyable gaming experience.

It's easy to solve in a way that yields a fun game. What is difficult--and probably impossible--is to solve it in a way that yields a fun game with RPG mechanics. The entire gameplay style is inherently broken in this regard... which makes sense, in a way; they're called Role-Playing Games for a reason and if you remove the "role playing" aspect you're left with something fundamentally similar to Progress Quest.

Re:RMT is the natural result of the grind

[klngarthur]

I'm sure that in a perfect world where developer time was limitless you could actually make an MMO without timesinks or grinds that provided compelling content for years at a time to players. We, however, do not live in such a world. Making content takes time. There is simply no way to produce unique, enjoyable, and quality content at the same rate at which it is consumed by players. This is further exacerbated by the fact that your player base will be fragmented amongst many differing play styles which in all likelihood will not overlap.

Re:RMT is the natural result of the grind

[Anonymous Coward]

ctrl + c
ctrl + v
???
Profit!

Re:RMT is the natural result of the grind

[syntaxglitch]

So all Zelda does is provide the same kind of game without "the grind". And does it all within a total playtime equivalent to maybe two months of MMO subscription. That does not encourage a continuous revenue stream.

I haven't played any MMORPGs, but what about them makes them so "open ended"? "the grind".

Re:RMT is the natural result of the grind

[HUADPE]

It's actually interesting that many of the complaints about "the grind" in WoW (the only MMORPG I know well) aren't quite valid. Blizzard has made several components of the game massive time sinks in order to placate those with no life, but they aren't essential to progressing. Mostly this is since the last patch. A couple of examples. The "nether drake" is a fancy looking dragon you can ride around on that has no utility in completing game content besides looking cool. It is very time consuming to get, and exists to give people something to do when they have all day to play. Second, on the opposite end are the Arenas, where you get points for items based on your rating (which increases with games won, and decreases with games lost) with no regard to how many games you play (more than 10, so you can't just sit on a high rating). If I play 10 or 100, it in no way changes what I get unless I win more.

Are there still aspects of "the grind" that are annoying, yeah, but game designers are pretty smart, and I think Blizzard in this case did a decent job in creating a game that has components for grinders and non-grinders.

Re:RMT is the natural result of the grind

[Sage Gaspar]

MMOs typically do not have quests that you "have to" do as any significant portion of the game. At a certain level you might have a choice of four or five different dungeons to go to, each of which has its own little mini questline with items, EXP and gold as rewards. Quests are almost entirely "kill ten X", "go to X location", "find ten random drop X from Y creature", "kill the boss", "find ten stone markers on the ground", etc. Alternately you could just find a corner and grind yourself up in levels without doing much of the quest content. For items you can try to find special creatures (usually called "named" because they have actual names instead of just an_angry_boar_02) that drop items that you might use. People usually gravitate towards the easiest questlines and dungeons with the best rewards.

It's sorta a strange dynamic. People play for all sorts of different and sometimes conflicting reasons. It is true that the best kind of game would be one where advancement comes almost by accident while you're enjoying your game instead of the other way around.

Re:RMT is the natural result of the grind

[klngarthur]

The thing is most people who play these games do it for the advancement. The fun is in the sense of accomplishment. You don't get that when the advancement is secondary. Then you've got an entirely different game entirely. Not all games are for all people. MMORPGs are really for people who are all about the destination. For people who are about the journey there are a lot of other options.

Re:RMT is the natural result of the grind

[CastrTroy]

I guess I'm just into different games, but what's the point of advancement just for advancement. So what if you're level 70 if all you ever do is kill boars in the forest. If it's all just for bragging rights, then I don't see why they are so popular. I think it would be much more fulfilling to say I beat quest A when I was only at level X, then to say I got to level 70. Anybody can get to a certain level if they just play long enough, it doesn't say anything about how good you are at a game.

Re:RMT is the natural result of the grind

[Endo13]

Well, that's the problem. There's really only two alternatives, the first of which is to offer enough real unique content to keep players busy without making them replay the same content over and over. It's easy to see why most MMO developers go with the grind over this first alternative - you get a lot more play time (and therefore more months of subscriptions) for the same amount of effort in designing content. The second alternative is to allow lots of freedom for player-made content, (think player-built and controlled towns for example) which introduces its own set of problems and is really an entirely different type of game from the standard MMO fare.

Personally, I think I'd be willing to pay a higher monthly fee for more unique content to do away with the grind entirely.

Re:RMT is the natural result of the grind

[Maxo-Texas]

The main difficulty with mmorgs is that to do as he asks would require developing a hundred to a thousand times more content. Developing content takes people time and so it costs money. All that content has to run on content servers (not such a big issue now that they have instances but a big deal in shared zones).

The type of mmorg he is picturing (with a huge amount of content) would be very expensive. The grind allows them to develop one dungeon and require that you use it for a hundred hours before you can move on to the next dungeon where as many console games you can finish completely in under 100 hours (at a cost of about $50).

Players who can afford to play 50 hours a week exacerbate the problem and for some weird reason they seem to have a "rock star" appeal to the game designers (who even hang out with such players). So while more and more customers become completely unable to ever see content- the designers keep releasing content for that increasingly tiny leading edge.

If I were running a company, I would focus on the 20 hour a week players and let the 50 hour a week players "win" and sit and spin for a few months between each expansion since they cost a lot of bandwidth and they cost a lot of money to keep developing content for that only they consume.

Re:RMT is the natural result of the grind

[klngarthur]

The point is,for many people, the sense of accomplishment you get from a completing a task. Think about it like a high school graduation. Just about anybody can complete this task, but that doesn't take the sense of accomplishment out of doing it. Obviously that is not the only reason people play, but i'd imagine it's a large contributor.

Re:RMT is the natural result of the grind

[Kuvter]

I look at it this way, if people are willing to spend money to NOT experience part of the game, then there is a fundamental design flaw in the game. I challenge everyone to think of a way for a game to have an economy and not have the potential something like RMT to whore it. If there isn't one then it's not a design flaw it's more of a logical limitation.

For me that time factor involved in acquiring money and gear gives me a sense of ownership. If you didn't have to grind for hours or go through huge raids to get the best equipment then it wouldn't seem like much of an accomplishment.

Parts can seem tedious, but they're still fun. This isn't a design flaw. Compare it to the real world a second. If you want a Dodge Viper and not a beat up old car you have to work for it. If everyone could spend a little bit of time working to get a Viper then the value of a Viper would diminish. So the way the games are set up they're so you can feel you accomplished something.

If someone wants to sell their accomplishments, they can. If someone wants to buy someone else's accomplishment instead of working to get it themselves, they can as well. Personally I'd never pay for items or money in a game. To me that'd take away from the game experience and I wouldn't feel like I earned it. However for some people who don't have that much free time and want to experience late game material I wouldn't hold it against them.

I can hardly believe it's a fundamental flaw for a game to have 100+ hours worth of content and not have a way for people to take a warp hole, like in Mario, to skip through part of it.

Re:RMT is the natural result of the grind

[UnknownSoldier]

> "the grind" in WoW (the only MMORPG I know well) aren't quite valid.

The _only_ way to level up, is to kill things, so how is the grind "not valid" ???

Re:RMT is the natural result of the grind

[Anonymous Coward]

The next big trend will be virtual tourist helpers, or WOWguides of the non-NPC variery.
They will escort you around and show you the coolest stuff in the game, help you arrange your skills, trades, spells, etc to make sure you are not working harder than you should and are enjoying the game instead of running around aimlessly. Guilds were supposed to fill that function but a lot of them require a lot of time and continued character levelling instead of someone going at their own pace.

Re:RMT is the natural result of the grind

[UnknownSoldier]

> Quests are almost entirely

Wow only has 6 basic types of quests:
  * "Kill" -- Kill 'X' out of 'Y' mobs
  * "Random Drop" -- Kill 'X' mobs until item 'Z' drops
  * "Boss" -- Kill 'X' mob (usually a boss) and get their 'Y' body part
  * "Gopher" -- Semi-Common. Go fetch item 'Z'
  * "Escort" -- Rare. Escort NPC from 'A' to 'B'
  * "Defend" -- Very rare. Defend/protect an npc against incoming waves of mobs.

--
Wikipedia believes in the myth of NPOV. You can see the censoring under any critcism page, such as World of Warcraft Criticism

Re:RMT is the natural result of the grind

[tm2b]

I'm with you.

I played EQ2 before WoW. In EQ2, at least when I played, you could do all the quests in the world (which I did), and you'd still have to "grind," which is to say kill things just for the direct benefit (Xp or loot) of the killing, and not in the service of advancing any plot line.

Before EQ2, I played City of Heroes. There, most of the missions were akin to grinding - levels that were randomized off of one of a number of very simple templates, and players had to return to very similar levels again and again and again. Plot lines were minimal, and after a while the missions themselves were their own kind of grind.

In WoW, there's simply too much content - you can not do all the quests available to you without advancing in level past where they're any sort of a challenge. WoW has so much more story that the places where you really do have to grind (Furlbogs, and Turtle Scales, bletch) before the endgame are the exception, not the rule. If you start at 60th level in the new Burning Crusades content and focus entirely on doing quests in ascending order, you end up hitting 70th level somewhere in Nagrand, with more than half of the pre-70th level content (in Blade's Edge Mountains, Netherstorm, and Shadowmoon Valley) still undone.

Re:RMT is the natural result of the grind

[manekineko2]

The problem with your idea is that the very idea of a MMORPG is based around avatar capital. They are actually very simple games, that can be boiled down a surprisingly large amount and still retain their addictiveness. Psychologists have found if you rig up a button that gives rewards every, or almost every, push, people will get bored with it after a while and only get the rewards when they need it. If it never, or almost never gives rewards, people will get bored with it. However, if it gives rewards occasionally, especially somewhat randomly, then it becomes addictive, and every time the reward pops out it trains the brain to want to push it more to get more. This is the entire diabolical purpose behind MMORPGs, giving the reward often enough that to keep the interest, but not so often as to break the addiction. You take out the grind, and the money machine that is the MMORPG breaks down.

Re:RMT is the natural result of the grind

[Admiral Ag]

You can solve it by dividing avatar capital into various sorts.

Most games have only one sort of avatar capital, or one sort that is dominant. Usually it is character power. The more of this you have, the easier it is to kill other players. WoW has this in spades, since high level characters can usually kill anyone of low level in one or two shots.

Personally, I hate overpowered characters.

I think it would be much better if the statistical differences between characters weren't overwhelming, and things like faction reputation had more influence. In other words, characters who have been playing for a long time and have achieved a lot have much more freedom in the world than newer characters, even though the more established characters can't completely dominate the new ones. Warhammer may well be like this, which will be interesting.

Gear progression should be somewhat specialized. If you want to complete tiered raids or dungeons, you will need gear from each tier to do so, but that gear will not necessarily translate into a massive advantage over people who don't raid (e.g. you need massive resistance gear and so on).

Re:RMT is the natural result of the grind

[Wicked Zen]

I play Lord of the Rings: Online (LotRO). At level 35, I have yet to feel compelled to grind for levels or gold/silver. In fact, almost every quest I have completed has been soloed, though I have done a few "fellowship" quests. I do kill monsters on my way to (or as part of) completing quests, but "grind?" Not yet. I and members of my kinship (guild) freely trade or give away components for crafting and the items that result. Hence there is no need at all to buy gold. One could, but most of the best gear is obtained from quests and -- here's the part I love -- it "binds" to you as soon as you get it. You can't even give it away. Don't need it? Throw it away or sell it to an NPC vendor for not much money at all.

Anyway my point is that there seems to be game developers who are learning to make games where

• grinding is not required to advance (although you can if that's what turns you on),
• the primary method of advancement is fun (the quests are all stories, and many are tied into a larger, compelling, tale), and
• real-money trade is not particularly helpful (the most useful thing it would be for -- aside from paying repair bills -- is buying crafting ingredients in-game, and the main purpose of crafting is to make consumable items your character finds very helpful but not strictly necessary, or occasionally some nice gear that you can either wear or sell, but not both).

Now hold onto your nuts; here comes the kicker.

LotRO publisher Turbine is among a growing number of MMOG developers who think that RMT isn't necessarily a bad thing, and may well be the future of MMO gaming. http://www.eurogamer.net/article.php?article_id=76 995

Re:RMT is the natural result of the grind

[AK Marc]

* "Gopher" -- Semi-Common. Go fetch item 'Z'

I've just started playing WoW, and this seems to be the most common, if you expand it to include visiting a location or delivering an item. Often these will be multiple parts of a bigger quest line. There was one "go to the ruins and talk to the survey team." They were dead, so when you talk to them it because "kill 'X' mobs until 'Z' drops" and once it dropped, it was a "deliver 'Z'" I believe it was split to two quests. There was another that I don't remember as clearly that was 3 because the item itself started another quest. Perhaps it's just because the low levels want you to wander all around and get used to exploring, but I'd say a large portion of my completed quests were visiting some location or transporting some item.

Re:RMT is the natural result of the grind

[Anonymous Coward]

At the very least, you forgot:

* "Delivery" -- Travel elsewhere, talk to NPC. (This is actually the most common part of a chain.)
* "Scouting" -- Go to a particular area and return. (With maybe an event when you get there.)
* "Item" -- Deliver random drop to NPC. (a.k.a. "This Item Begins A Quest")
* "PvP Tower" -- Capture tower from the other faction by standing in it (unstealthed) for X amount of time.

Re:RMT is the natural result of the grind

[Anonymous Coward]

What you described is a Skinner Box; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skinner_box

Re:RMT is the natural result of the grind

[WNight]

No, in the real world the value of a dodge viper would remain the same. It would be as fast, etc. Only a small amount of its value, that related to penis size, would change. For fake e-items that only decorate your character, that's all of the value.

I can hardly believe people have been convinced that something that isn't fun and they aren't allowed to skip past is a game.

With First-Person Shooters you can see a dichotomy between the two styles. Doom/Quake let you save anytime, load anytime, and replay an area endlessly. Soldier of Fortune had limited save points, limited reloads, etc. (You could turn this off, but it was on by default.) The devs might have forced me to be a better player to reach any specific piece of content (less reloads) but the game stunk because of the console feel. Doom on the other hand caters to someone reloading endlessly trying to beat something. Theoretically Doom should have made me a worse player, but not only did Doom encourage replay (just the areas you really want to redo) but that practice made me a much better player than doing it "right" once and hating the game.

I still jump into Doom2 every now and then to replay my favorite bits. I type in a cheat code (oh noes!) and am right where I want, armed and ready. So many games are just about restricting access to the fun content, it takes a good game to be fun throughout.

Nice Marketing Piece

[Saxerman]

For those of you who haven't figured out why this is dumb yet, consider playing a board game with friends, and having one of your more affluent friends pulling out his wallet and offering other players real money for their monopoly money.

Re:Nice Marketing Piece

[k_187]

The only idiot in that situation is the buyer. They are the ones paying money for nothing (don't know if their chicks are free). The seller similarly gets money for nothing. Why wouldn't they engage in that transaction?

Re:Nice Marketing Piece

[svendsen]

If it where just the seller and buyer playing then their would be no issue. However they are other players who want to play by the rules. What you are doing is circumventing the rules and causing their experience to suffer. Bots, spam, inflation, etc. Since what they do effects more then just the buyer and seller that's the issue.

Re:Nice Marketing Piece

[revlayle]

Another note, unless you play board games that can go on for weeks or months (or longer, and some very strategic board games can take a while to play)) as well as have many more people playing, the analogy becomes weaker. If people were playing a variant of Monopoly with 150 people that lasted 2 years, would this behavior become more common?

Re:Nice Marketing Piece

[Sage Gaspar]

Except it's a game of monopoly where everyone is a winner if they sit at the table for long enough.

Re:Nice Marketing Piece

[merreborn]

For those of you who haven't figured out why this is dumb yet, consider playing a board game with friends, and having one of your more affluent friends pulling out his wallet and offering other players real money for their monopoly money.

If I was playing an 8 million player, multi-year long game of monopoly, I'd *expect* a certain portion of the players to do just that.

When you've spent thousands of hours of your life playing a single game, throwing an extra $20 bucks at it now and then doesn't seem like that bad of an idea.

Re:Nice Marketing Piece

[Etherized]

For those of you who haven't figured out why this is dumb yet, consider playing a board game with friends, and having one of your more affluent friends pulling out his wallet and offering other players real money for their monopoly money.

It's not really analogous - Monopoly is 1) a directly competitive game with 2) a well-defined endpoint that is 3) measured largely by the amount of currency players posses.

In contrast, MMOs, while containing elements of competition, are not generally "won" or "lost," rather they contain content that is "consumed." There is no endpoint, as there's always the potential to consume something else, and success isn't even measured by how much gold one has. It's really defined by a series of successes and failures - in many ways, that's a similar paradigm to real life.

Furthermore, the quantity of gold accumulated in an MMO is almost always proportional to the time spent in the game - in the typical system, time is effectively converted to in-game wealth. I don't think being unemployed will help you win a game of Monopoly, but it will sure give you a lot more time to acquire MMO wealth.

It's hard to find a workable analogy that makes game currency exchange actually look bad, because it's basically just an extension of the way our real economy operates. You have a product that people want, they have a resource they can exchange for that product. People who buy the product with real-world money have simply earned a different, but equally (or more) valuable, resource outside of the game.

Re:Nice Marketing Piece

[moderatorrater]

That's not dumb at all. If someone wants to win a monopoly game bad enough, paying real money for another player to give them an advantage is the first thing that comes to mind. What they should really do is disallow any trading at all.

Re:Nice Marketing Piece

[Saxerman]

Consider the same transaction when done between two D&D players. Consider the transaction between a player and the DM. What sort of game are they then playing?

When I go skiing or hunting or hiking, I pay good money so I can spend more time doing the parts of those activities I enjoy. I outfit myself in gear that will increase my enjoyment. Are those dumb transactions?

Where do you find fun, and how much does it cost?

Re:Nice Marketing Piece

[k_187]

Well, monopoly is a poor example, as its a zero-sum game. If one player gets better, its always to my own detriment. WoW, not so much. One player buying gold, doesn't harm my ability to farm gold, run instances or anything else.

Re:Nice Marketing Piece

[Saxerman]

Are they not both games? To which the point is to 'have fun'? Does having more monopoly money or WoW gold allow players to have more fun? At what cost?

Or, if the competitive nature of monopoly makes it too strained an analogy, compare a group of sculptors who all sit at a table together to make art from clay. Would it be wrong for one sculptor to offer another money for the bit of clay they were working on? Does that transaction change if one is a professional artist, and the other an amateur? What about after they've finished the pieces and fired them in the kiln?

Re:Nice Marketing Piece

[godscent]

For those of you who haven't figured out why this is dumb yet, consider playing a board game with friends, and having one of your more affluent friends pulling out his wallet and offering other players real money for their monopoly money.

That's a nice analogy, but it doesn't really work.

In most board games, it's simply you vs. everyone else. In most MMOs, it's you vs. the game. In this case, a better analogy would be you and your friends sitting around, playing solitaire. If one of your friends pays money to get dealt a better hand, so what? How does that hurt you? If that's what he enjoys, let him!

In PvP you're playing against other players, but it still isn't like Monopoly. In Monopoly, everyone starts at an even level. In MMO PvP, everyone starts at different levels with different equipment and skills. So one person might be better because he's better at the game. Another might be better because he has time to play the game 12 hours a day. Another might be better because he got power leveled by some friends. So what if there is yet another person who got to where he is by paying extra money? The only one of these things that can happen in Monopoly is having a player that's actually better at the game.

Re:Nice Marketing Piece

[Saxerman]

Paying money is the first thing that comes to mind? What about just brazenly dropping hotels on their property without playing for them? Pummeling the other players for their cash? Or stealthily picking up some extra cash from the bank? Or fudging your dice rolls so you make it past Park Place?

Sometimes the structure of the universe is there for us to enjoy. And sometimes it's the other way around.

Re:Nice Marketing Piece

[TrueJim]

I disagree. I think one of the other posters already summed this up quite well: you're basically paying somebody to help you skip some "boring" part of the game. (In this case, grinding.) I would gladly pay somebody $20 if doing so allowed me to skip 40 hours of "boring" Monopoly so that I could play just the 10 hours of "fun" Monopoly. The flaw here is on the part of the game designers. They shouldn't be designing a game that contains portions so boring that people are actually willing to pay to avoid them, just so that they can play the fun parts.

Re:Nice Marketing Piece

[fishbowl]

Monopoly doesn't have to be a boring game. It can be rather fast-paced and brutal, provided you play according to the actual rules of the game. Trouble is, few people seem willing to play by those rules, and that's a shame. The game can take on significant role-playing aspects that add a wonderful dimension. I prefer to play the Banker as a disinterested referee. It's fun because all money and property that passes between players, or passes between the player and the bank, goes through the Banker. And when you enforce the rules correctly, the economy of the game tends to be rational. One thing I definitely do not allow, is the notion that all tax money/fines etc. go in the middle of the board to be collected like a lottery upon "Free Parking." That silly house rule is pervasive, and is the single largest offending element that makes games interminably long. Another is when players are lax on the rules about building and tearing down, and when players are allowed to make ad-hoc private real estate deals that often violate the rules.

Play Monopoly according to the actual rules of the game, and if possible, have a Banker/Auctioneer/Referee who actually *knows* the rules and is willing to enforce and arbitrate, who preferably doesn't have a piece on the board. It's a completely different game when you do that, and with 4 players, often takes 45 minutes to an hour to play and usually tends to be a fairly well balanced economy right up to the end (not too many huge rapid reversals of fortune, unless someone gets really lucky and has the skill to exploit their luck.)

Common house rules and misinterpretations of the rules of the game lead to those six hour long boring struggles.

Re:Nice Marketing Piece

[Rhys]

What that point misses is that in the MMO world there isn't any "I win"... In monopoly, the game ends: there is a winner, and there are losers. But a MMO just goes on. You'd do better with an analogy of a pen&paper RPG where you can bribe the GM with pizza.

Except in a p&p RPG you usually can bribe the GM with game logs, and it is usually considered "okay". Some game systems even encourage rewarding players that do so! Or pick your other ways of describing "contributing": costume, lighting, music, props/models, or even pizza!

In monopoly, for instance, the dude in his mom's basement gets 1 turn for every turn I get. In a MMO, he gets a lot more "turns" (hours spent in game) than I do. In the MMO arena, however, that is considered fair. In monopoly, giving him extra turns would be considered unfair.

Poker might be a better analogy. Hands of poker end, but then there's another hand for play. Of course, someone who is rich (or foolish) will come to the table with more money than the other players. Is this a problem in poker? Answer: sometimes. Thus some (groups or games) may impose a cap (or not play for real money) on how much money you can bring to the table.

Solution (for MMOs): Make RMT and non-RMT servers. Consumers can then decide which they'd rather play on. In addition, the RMT servers need the company that runs them to facilitate the RMT. They already have your cc #, so just tack it on to monthly fees (or deduct off prepaid time).

Re:Nice Marketing Piece

[fishbowl]

>Consider the same transaction when done between two D&D players.

If their meeting is plausible in-game, is in-character, is not against local in-game laws, etc., then fine.

Re:Nice Marketing Piece

[brkello]

Stuff like this hurts to read. An analogy is something that should be used when you are trying to simplify a difficult concept. This is not hard to understand and your analogy fails because it over simplifies something that is already simple. It takes a lot of time (much longer than a game of monopoly) to do a lot of things in MMORPGs. Instead of spending all that time, some people would rather just trade with another user the items that they want. They spend money so they don't have to spend the time. It's more like hiring someone to mow your lawn (being a hypocrite here and making an analogy of something that doesn't need one...but by your analogy, maybe you do need this simplified). Yeah, you could mow it yourself...but it takes time an effort you don't feel like putting in to it so you hire a service to do it for you.

Re:Nice Marketing Piece

[Control Group]

The difference between a board game with six players and an MMO with tens or hundreds of thousands is a a difference in degree so large as to be a difference in kind. If one of six people in a Monopoly game drops a huge wad of cash on buying someone else's properties and Monopoly money, there's a material impact on the remaining four players, since now one person controls a full third of the wealth in the game.

This is a different story when even the biggest spender can only amass a tenth of a percent of all the wealth in the game - and for a game like WoW, I consider that proportion to be absurdly high.

The other difference which is strictly a difference in kind is that a game like Monopoly is, by nature, a zero-sum game. There will be one winner and five losers in our hypothetical six-player game. WoW - and probably all MMOs, though I don't know this for sure - are distinctly not zero-sum games. They aren't even competitive in the same fashion as Monopoly.

The analogy of MMOs to Monopoly is analogous to an alligator on a rollerskate.

Re:Nice Marketing Piece

[SL Baur]

That's a completely different situation. There is absolutely zero chance that you can go out and kill a bear in the woods somewhere and have it drop a pair of skis, or a better gun, etc.

Re:Nice Marketing Piece

[Sneftel]

Wow, a Monopoly snob. I didn't know they existed.

Re:Nice Marketing Piece

[WNight]

Depends if you were the first hunter or not.

Re:Nice Marketing Piece

[fishbowl]

>Wow, a Monopoly snob. I didn't know they existed.

Fair enough; but I just get tired of responding to people who believe a game of Monopoly is necessarily long and boring, even when their alterations to the rules are what caused the problem.

Re:Nice Marketing Piece

[ahodgson]

It hurts your ability to buy anything on the AH, because the players with purchased gold can afford to spend more. You often need those items to complete quests, craft potions, upgrade items; many of which you need in order to run instances. At the same time, the farmers are camping those rare items so that they can get more gold to sell, so you can't even farm them yourself.

So, yes, it does definitely hurt you.

I'm a seller

[ILuvRamen]

Before I got banned from Runescape I was super rich and just one decided to sell 10 million gp I didn't need. I got $110 for it on ebay and the guy in game said he was a kinda old dude who had neices and nephews that played religiously and he wanted to get them a nice christmas present of several million gp each but he had a job and didn't have time to play and make that much money. So he was happy and his kids were happy and I was happy and we all lived happily ever after. So yeah, it's not just chinese people selling to obsessed 20 year olds and rich, spoiled kids.

Re:I'm a seller

[gronofer]

You got a good rate, if the current deals on sparter.com are anything to go by ($2.7050 per rs million). At that rate, almost any real world job would probably pay better then playing Runescape, especially after accounting for the computer time (electricity and depreciation), so it doesn't look like a big employment opportunity.

In any case, Jagex (the game publisher) could probably shut down the Runescape accounts involved quite easily, for example by posing as a gold buyer on the site themselves.

A non-answer

[venicebeach]

This question is very similar to the earlier "Cheating Your System" question which outlines the fraud problem. As mentioned there, we have systems which look at all aspects of the transaction to gauge its likeliness to be fraudulent. Our strongest long-term weapon is the ability to ban participants from the marketplace, a tactic which is much more effective in the C2C world where a scammer cannot just move on to the next gold selling B2C website. Since gamers on Sparter tend to under price the B2Cs by 30-40%, getting banned for bad behavior is stealing from your own pocket.

Oh I see! I now fully trust that they are on top of the fraud issue. We can rest easy, they have systems that look at all aspects of the transaction!

Re:A non-answer

[Anonymous Coward]

Keep in mind though, that this is how a lot of anti-fraud systems work. Ie, automated systems flag "suspect" transactions ("WTF? Dude lives in Des Moines, but has a single Visa transaction in Kuala Lumpur? *FLAG*") and then those transactions are followed up with by a human. What Sparter-dude is probably saying is that they've developed their own set of heuristics for determining what gets flagged. Now, whether those heuristics are at all accurate is another matter entirely ;)

Re:A non-answer

[Anonymous Coward]

As someone who designs and develops fraud detection software for financial institutions I can tell you that anything they will be using to 'detect fraud' is a toy.

Decent fraud detection software costs millions of dollars to buy and/or develop. My guess is they have a couple of queries on their Access database looking for particular ip addresses.

It's all smoke and mirrors.

I read this far:

[Anonymous Coward]

By choosing to not support their consumers' needs, publishers have cast gamers into a very risky grey market dominated by B2Cs and replete with fraud.

So... it's the publishers fault that your users might get scammed in the process of participating in a service transaction that you back but which the publishers explicitly forbid?

Right.

Maybe instead of opening this RMT "service" you ought to just go into political consulting. With slimey comments like that at your disposal you'd be rolling in the green in no time.

Re:I read this far:

[moderatorrater]

So, it's this site's fault that people go into a potentially illegal money exchange and get scammed?

Re:I read this far:

[Anonymous Coward]

First off, your comment is not relevant to anything I stated in mine. It's poor form to imply that another poster made statements they didn't actually make in order to push your own point. Either start your own discussion on the matter or respond to something I actually stated, because at no point did I say that the money sellers are to blame.

However, yes, they are to blame anyway. Since the entire purpose of the site is to facilitate an illegitimate transaction, they share in the blame for any negative consequences of that transaction. This is a common sense conclusion.

Re:I read this far:

[hustlebird]

Simply put, yes it is the publishers fault. They have designed a game where a black market has been created to exchange gold. It's quite obvious that this black market is going to exist regardless of what the publishers do, so its frivolous for said publishers to continue trying to lock it down and acknowledge it, pull gold trade out of the black market, and keep the gamers from entering this "very risky grey market" that they're talking about here.

I hate to bring up analogies, but it's alot like prohibition, all it did was make alcohol black market, made the purchases riskier, it didn't thwart much alcohol consumption, merely made everyone turn away from the legit sources and find it in other places.

Re:I read this far:

[Anonymous Coward]

Making and selling alcohol has nothing in common with taking someone else's database records and selling them. That was a horrible analogy.

The terms of service are presented at signup. Users who disagree have violated the contract. As such, the only thing publishers should be doing, in those games where selling gold and items is proscribed, is banning RECIPIENTS of the transfers with extreme prejudice and releasing the account handles of those users in a very public way.

Give them a break

[Jaeph]

By stating up-front they are against duping, in-game spamming, etc, they are really focusing on the major argument: is it right to buy and sell in-game items?

Now many of you may knee-jerk post how wrong it is, but consider that the buy-sell industry is out there and flourishing. There are plenty of consumers who want that action. Furthermore, nobody is getting "hurt" in any traditional sense.

This seems to me a case of a societal split in attitude, not a deep philosophical problem. Should the man walk into the room first or second when escorting a lady? That's the kind of argument we are seeing here.

-jeff, who has never bought or sold in-game items, etc, for real-world cash.

Re:Give them a break

[Anonymous Coward]

Allowing people to buy gold hurts nobody except the people that live vicariously through these games. The _ONLY_ reason Blizzard and other companies don't allow it is because it fucks up the treadmill and a large number of players quit once they get the top end items and realize it was all a complete waste of time. Anyone that has worked on a MMORPG will tell you the exact same thing.

The people who play for fun continue to play and it makes little difference if Jimmy has his sword of +31337 awesomeness or not. From my experience in MMORPGs, the people who actually care about this just feel cheated because someone found a way to get what they want out of the game in a way that doesn't involve mindlessly grinding away for months. "OH NOES! TIMMAY DIDN'T WASTE THREE MONTHS OF HIS LIFE KILLING MURLOCS TO GET HIS EPIC MOUNT LIKE I DID!" If they weren't so addicted to "epic" items and attempting to horde power over others in the game none of it would matter.

Re:Give them a break

[Nilych]

Except that some games explicity do not allow RMT. Some include a line about that in their EULA (I assume WoW does) or ToS, but then don't really enforce it.
 
What about games like FinalFantasy XI? SquareEnix bans RealMoneyTraders, gold/gil farmers, etc on a regular basis. In the past year, so many have been banned and so much money has been removed from the game economy, it actually caused mass deflation to the tune of about 90%. And SE isn't done. For the past year, they've focused strictly on the sellers- a month or so ago, they decided the buyers could be held accountable too.
 
It doesn't seem like the legitimacy/legality/morality of RMTs is much of a question when the people running the game can say, "We've banned thousands for doing what you did. Guess what we'll do to you."

Re:Give them a break

[Xentor]

Q: is it right to buy and sell in-game items?

A: It's against the terms of service for the game. You agree to these by becoming a paying subscriber. Hence, unless those rules change, it is wrong, and can get you banned from the game. Is it wrong, in the moral sense, regardless of terms? Well, if there was an infinite money/resources cheat in Counterstrike or Starcraft, would it be right or wrong to use it (Not counting single-player mode)?

Q: There are plenty of consumers who want that action.

A: You can say that about nearly anything, including assault weapons, drugs, and nuclear weapons. An entirely different scale, of course, but the point is that just because people want something doesn't mean it has to be available.

Q: Furthermore, nobody is getting "hurt" in any traditional sense.

A: I join a group with someone who just bought their level 70 warrior on E-Bay, or whatever service. The group spends the next half hour or so in a frustrating attempt to clear a dungeon, trying to teach him the most basic concepts of the game so he can actually contribute to the team, before finally giving up. Have I been physically hurt? No. Has it damaged my play experience? Yes.
(Note: This is based on actual first-hand experience, except the warrior was only a level 64)

Q: This seems to me a case of a societal split in attitude, not a deep philosophical problem. Should the man walk into the room first or second when escorting a lady? That's the kind of argument we are seeing here.

A: What does this have to do with anything?

Advancing in a game in any way other than playing within the rules of the game is cheating. If you enter IDDQD (god mode) in Doom, you're cheating. If you edit your save-game file in Civilization to give you ten billion dollars, you're cheating. If your friend is a programmer, and you give him $5 to edit your save game file, you're still cheating. The difference is that in a single-player game, it only affects you, so nobody cares.

These Sparter guys are trying to convince us that cheating in a multiplayer game is just fine. Honestly, I don't see why this is even a question.

Disclaimer: I'm an avid WoW player, with 3 level 70 characters and 4 others above 60. I've never used any "RMT" services, nor have I "powerleveled," as I personally consider the latter to be contrary to my self-imposed moral code. Yes, I have a full-time job. I've just been playing a long time.

Second disclaimer: Yeah, it's a quiet day at work...

Re:Give them a break

[Anonymous Coward]

Now many of you may knee-jerk post how wrong it is, but consider that the buy-sell industry is out there and flourishing. There are plenty of consumers who want that action. Furthermore, nobody is getting "hurt" in any traditional sense. A number of the current gold sellers are using hacked accounts to acquire materials, which they then sell for gold. I'd say the owners of those hacked accounts are indeed being "hurt" in a traditional sense, and probably in a legal sense as well.

Re:Give them a break

[Fex303]

Now many of you may knee-jerk post how wrong it is, but consider that the buy-sell industry is out there and flourishing. There are plenty of consumers who want that action.

To see why this argument is wrong, replace the term 'buy-sell' with 'child prostitution'. Just because people do it doesn't make it morally right.

Furthermore, nobody is getting "hurt" in any traditional sense.

Depends on how you define traditional. Back when I played WoW, I couldn't afford any decent blues, let alone epics at the AH. This is because prices were inflated by a bunch of people who bought gold and used that to buy all the good items. The obvious solution would be to go and get some blues to sell at the AH. Except that when you go to somewhere with rare spawns, you'll find it camped out by a lvl 60 goldfarmer. Even in instance runs, there's the chance of nice items being ninjaed on a regular basis by goldfarmers/pricks.

So, yeah, these people can't hurt me in the traditional sense, but they can make my play experience less enjoyable.

Re:Give them a break

[SkunkPussy]

"Back when I played WoW, I couldn't afford any decent blues, let alone epics at the AH. This is because prices were inflated by a bunch of people who bought gold and used that to buy all the good items."

You can blame it on gold farmers, but its as likely that people will pay that much money to equip their alt and that their main character is far more advanced (and therefore better at money-making) than you were.

Fraud

[MalleusEBHC]

It seems they realize that given their lack of in game presence, they have no way of creating a totally secure system. They also make another smart move and guarantee that the individual who puts up the real currency (the buyer) will never be defrauded. However, as a seller, I still don't see why I should trust them. If someone buys gold and claims it was never sent, does the company plan on reimbursing the seller? It seems they wouldn't unless their claim of having no in-game presence is a lie. The only other option is to take the next seller that comes along and reroute the new sellers gold to the original, defrauded seller. In this case, the company would have to take the hit and lose some real world cash.

The company could force people to make small trades while building up some sort of a trust rating. This wouldn't solve the problem completely, but it would lessen the number and size of trades they have to eat. However, I can imagine this being very tedious if, say, you only plan on using the service once to get 5000g for your epic flying mount.

Re:Fraud

[CastrTroy]

I would like to see an MMORPG where the creators of the game encouraged selling and trading of items. Build the payment system into the game. It wouldn't be that hard to implement the system, and would get rid of a lot of the fraud, and other problems. There wouldn't be a need for a trust rating, because the purchase would be able to see exactly what they are buying, and they would always have it transfered to their character. Also, the sell would always receive their money. Why don't the game creators do this. There obviously a market for it. Although I would suggest against any portion of the sales going to the game company, as that would just encourage people to go around the system, which would defeat the whole purpose.

Re:Fraud

[Maxo-Texas]

That is an excellent idea.

I've been ripped off one time on ebay in over 50 transactions (and it was small) and it was by someone who had under fifty sales (and I got email from other ebay users indicating they probably got a few hundred dollars from all of us at $20 to $30 a piece).

I would never make a major purchase from someone who had that little rep. The trust system really does work well.
So you could decide to buy a magical sword for 999 gold from a guy with 13 sales or to buy a magical sword for 500 gold from someone that had 0 sales.

Trust systems built up over time by the users seem very effective for small transactions.
For anything which involved a few months of effort (millions of gold?) I would have to have a secure third party or someone with phenomenal rep (like 2,000+ sales to 1000 different people over six+ months).

Doesnt matter wether it is legal or not.

[Anonymous Coward]

If there is market, there will be trade. If there is trade, better if it is legal.

Re:Doesnt matter wether it is legal or not.

[YuriPup]

Simple and very true. Choose to allow the market and control it, or outlaw the market and have no control over it. And amazing number of posters are complaining that because it's a shadow market there is a lack of control. I like the idea of G2G selling.

Liars and fraud

[Anonymous Coward]

We do have systems in place to catch fraudsters and identify suspicious patterns of behavior, and we use this information to ban buyers we suspect of lying (a costly ban since they can never buy on Sparter again). But we cannot entirely fix this problem without help from publishers.

In other words, "our site will be full of fraud and we can't stop it but we're going to try to make this the game publisher's problem." In the mean time we can count on them to ban an internet based identity, something which has been shown to be a totally effective way of holding people accountable for their behavior.

Even if they could prevent fraud this site would become a clearing house for converting stolen or compromised accounts into real money.

Their entire plan seems to be an attempt to try to get game publishers to give them access to the game world itself in order to integrate their services into the game.

answers without answers

[zarkill]

As others have noted, there are a lot of words here without really saying much, but there were a couple in particular that made me go "hmmmm":

As to your question about income tax, because our typical seller is earning roughly enough to pay for his WoW subscription, we see selling on Sparter as analogous to selling on eBay, putting on a garage sale, or running a great lemonade stand. So...? Strictly speaking, all three of those enterprises are subject to income tax. Just because you're only making enough to pay for your subscription doesn't make you exempt. Does that mean the IRS is going to come knocking on your door for failing to report your gold selling or your lemonade stand? Probably not, but the interviewee seems to be implying that you will be immune from taxation, which isn't really true.

Here's how we see it: publishers do not have the right to tell gamers that they can't accept money from someone outside of the game. But they do have that right. They have the "right" to make any rules they want. They have the "right" to kick you out of their game for breaking their rules. Whether that's "smart" or "good" or "fair" is irrelevant. You're playing their game, you've agreed to their terms, and they certainly have the right to hold you to those terms or cancel your participation with their game.

Re:answers without answers

[SeaRaptor]

But they do have that right. They have the "right" to make any rules they want. They have the "right" to kick you out of their game for breaking their rules. Whether that's "smart" or "good" or "fair" is irrelevant. You're playing their game, you've agreed to their terms, and they certainly have the right to hold you to those terms or cancel your participation with their game. Do they really? I would be curious to see such a challenge to the standard MMO TOS go to court. I don't think that the gaming industry really would want it to come under that much scrutiny, myself, which is why I don't think you see any of them prosecute this kind of behavior amongst their regular customers.

Sounds like a good system to me....

[sampson7]

I have in the past been a moderately hard-core WoW played (Macbeth, level 70 Holy/Disc Priest on Bolderfist) and have bought gold in the past. The sad fact is that I enjoy playing, but do not have the free time to devote to farming and/or playing the stock market... er, Auction House. Simply put, my real-life time is in a more commodity than my RL money.

I have to say, however, that I don't buy gold often or in great quantities for the simple reason that I don't believe most of the gold advertisements I see out there and I don't trust the seller to come through on his end of the bargain without spreading my credit card information out there for everyone to see.

This system, however, sounds like a more trustworthy method of purchasing gold. I for one, intend to give it a shot. I like the idea of individual sellers rather than corporate farmers making the money, and I think increased competition will actually drive prices down. In essence, the free market shall triumph.

I understand that some people will view this as cheating, but that's not how I see it. This is not an economy with a finite monetary supply. The only limiting factor on weath is time. I see no problem with paying someone else for their time investment. I also anticipate that some folks will ask "why play a game if it's not fun." Well, I think most aspects of the game are fun. Lots of fun, in fact. But like most things, it's not a perfect system and I'm happy to pay a small amount of money to avoid the un-fun aspects of the game in order to concentrate on the fun stuff. Again, works for me.

Re:Sounds like a good system to me....

[Anonymous Coward]

This system, however, sounds like a more trustworthy method of purchasing gold. I for one, intend to give it a shot. I like the idea of individual sellers rather than corporate farmers making the money, and I think increased competition will actually drive prices down. In essence, the free market shall triumph.

Good thing there's no chance that the person you buy from using this service isn't a corporate farmer or a stolen account right?

Decent Interview

[Tridus]

Early commenters don't seem to like this interview very much, but keep in mind these are executives working in what is definitely hostile territory (geek MMO players who dislike gold sellers).

In particular, I found their justification for this being okay despite being against the TOS to be interesting. Its a fair point really, Blizzard has very little legal say in who I give my real life money to. I recently gave a real life friend 400g to help him buy a flying mount, and thats okay. He could also give me $50 as a birthday present, and thats okay. So if I give him 400g and he gives me $50 and we dispense with the friends and birthdays stuff, now its not okay? Blizzard can't tell the difference from their end, all they know is that I gave someone on my friends list 400g.

(Its also interesting that they mention peons4hire being sued for spamming and not for breaking the TOS or for gold selling, as spamming is the only activity there thats actually illegal.)

Obviously they're going to take quite a bit of flak, but they seem to have actually attempted to answer the questions (in executive speak in some cases, but still). If nothing else, this certainly beats the interview with the Turbine exec a while ago.

Re:Decent Interview

[EvilNight]

Early commenters usually go with not reading anything, or mocking everything. You'll find browsing with a -6 to 'funny' and 'insightful' usually clears up the problem by removing the idiot remarks and the groupthink (which is sadly dumber than the idiot remarks most of the time).

The best you can say about this company is that they have a plausible argument. Frankly, that's impressive by itself in this particular industry.

Re:Decent Interview

[Anonymous Coward]

The best you can say about this company is that they have a plausible argument.

Except they don't.

No publisher has ever claimed that they can control who you give your money to. You can buy all the in-game items you want from anybody you want anywhere you want and the publishers are not going to do a single thing about it because they have absolutely no say over who you send your money to and for what reason. What they're going to ban you for is using their server to complete the transaction.

The morality of it is immaterial. Part of the transaction must occur on the publisher's servers, and the publishers say that you can't do that and they'll ban you if they catch you. At no point did these people make any attempt to address this except to blame the publishers for setting forth game mechanics that these people personally don't agree with.

Too bad. You're not going to get banned for buying the items from these people, any other sellers, or eBay. You're going to get banned for using the publisher's server to clearly violate one of the most obvious rules of the game.

Same goes for bots and leveling services. You're not going to get banned for downloading the bot, you're not going to get banned for running the bot, you're not going to get banned for modifying the executable. You're going to get banned for connecting the bot to their server, against their rules, and cheating on their server.

Their server, their rules. If you don't like it, don't connect. You can whine, you can write letters, and you can take your money elsewhere, but you certainly don't have any right to just ignore any old rule you disagree with just because you disagree with it.

Everything asked, nothing answered

[halcyon1234]

Wow, that was-- useless. There wasn't any new information put out there, except for a bunch of PR marketspeak for "We don't have a real business plan, and are hoping everything will work itself out."

Allow me to summarize:

Is this a marketing stunt?

No. It's just a way to get word of our product out to our target demo.

Will your product get us banned from WoW?

Probably, but use our service anyways 'cause Blizzard is such a meanie.

Will you get sued?

We're hoping not to.

How are you going to prevent farmers from selling?

We aren't 'cause, like, farmers will pay us too. Did we mention that other RMT sites totally suck?

Do the makers of the games like you?

Our business plan is awesome, and the game makers think so. At least, we think they should. We haven't really asked them. But we're totally going to real soon.

Can a buyer cheat a seller?

Yes. Nothing we can do about it, and that's totally Blizzard's fault for not liking us.

How will you "eliminate the middleman"? What about sweatshops?

Middleman: We don't (please ignore that we say we do). Sweatshops: By pretending they don't exist, lalalala.

Will you tell us about the "anti-fraud" tech you use?

No, because we don't actually have any aside from looking at the logs every now and then.

How will you handle conversion? How will you stop someone from hording gold?

Conversion: Duh, dunno. Somehow. Hording: Uhh, we're hoping someone else will do that for us. For free. Any takers?

How will you deal with players being taxed, present and possible future?

We have no fucking clue. Go ask H&R Block or something.

They managed to evade answering any of the questions asked of them by either redirecting the answer to a talking-point, or by ignoring the question altogether. Everything was put in the frame of their "average, ideal customer" who is bright eyed Johnny trying to trade his extra Sword of Goodness for a few dollars to take Molly to the drive-in. They have no plans or use cases for dealing with fraudsters, changing markets, hoarders, an intrusive government, lawsuits, customer disputes (legitimate or not), human rights violations, international law, changing tax environments, or business-to-business relations. They are literally assuming that everything will just go right-- and their entire business model depends entirely on everything going right.

So in other-words, another buzzy company with no clue who is going to singlehandedly revolutionize the marketplace, and everyone will love them. Sure thing. I'll be by in 3 months to purchase your astroglide chairs and pinball machines for pennies on the dollar at your bankruptcy auction.

Re:Everything asked, nothing answered

[YuriPup]

How are they supposed to know about tax ramifications when there is no law covering it? At the moment /no one/ knows the answer to those questions.

Re:Everything asked, nothing answered

[halcyon1234]

I expect them to have some sort of a plan, if they intend to be the market leaders. "Shit happens" is not an acceptable mission statement. What will they do if the government requires them to hand over tax information for all their US based users? What will happen to non-US based users in that case? Same question, but for Canada. UK. Australia. What if they are told to start charging sales tax on all transactions. Can their system adapt to that. Will I get a tax credit if I'm exempt? Do they put some of their profit in reserve in case they are suddenly asked for a year's worth of back taxes? Will they help me get receipts for income tax purposes?

There are lots of things they can plan for. Saying "Go ask someone else, we don't know" is not a plan.

Re:Everything asked, nothing answered

[AK Marc]

How are they supposed to know about tax ramifications when there is no law covering it? At the moment /no one/ knows the answer to those questions.

Well, they shouldn't answer the question because it is very bad form to offer tax advice (borderline illegal if you are wrong, and you can be easily sued). But aside from that, I would say that tax law is quite clear. If you make less than you spend (casual user), then it isn't income. It's a hobby with some recovering of cost, but no net income. It doesn't need to be declared. If you make net income, then you would handle it like all other home businesses (and no, I don't mean you hide your income from the IRS like most people that run home businesses do). Who the hell cares if it is online? What does it matter if you level up so your character is worth $20 more? That matters as much as if your Microsoft stock goes up $20. Nothing matters until it is transfered to someone else. If you have stuff in a game that could be sold for $1,000,000 in an open auction, it doesn't matter. You can trade with others in-game, and do whatever you want. It wouldn't affect your taxes at all. That's what most of the posters here seem to be worried about, "but I could sell my rogue for $1000 with all his stuff and gold, so the IRS is going to come get me." No, you are now and will forever be safe from that, until you actuall do sell him, or you are playing the game for the purpose of generating a profit.

And you can't claim you are trying for profit if a profit is unatainable. That is, if you claim you are running a business out of your house for the purpose of selling gold in a MMORPG, but you are incapable of generating enough gold to sell and cover your costs, then you can't claim it is a business. Why would someone do that? Because of the tax benefits. Deducting all your computer hardware, part of your home, your software and subscription costs, and all that would make a big difference. However, if you can't actually make money, it is an income generating hobby.

The only people that think these things aren't clear in the IRS rules already are the lawyers that want to quibble (at $500 per hour) and people that don't already know the rules.

Re:Everything asked, nothing answered

[Lost Engineer]

Sure thing. I'll be by in 3 months to purchase your astroglide chairs and pinball machines for pennies on the dollar at your bankruptcy auction. Dude, I don't know much about chairs, but astroglide is lube. The kind for people, not cars.

Time is money!

[crazycrazy]

The simple truth is that not everyone wants to spend their gaming time grinding out in game currency for their next item upgrades.

There will always be people that would rather spend cash than time, that is never going to change. And the bottom line is the game developers know this, their policies concerning RMT are to protect their own interests, and you can't blame them for their stance, but the market isn't going to go away either.

Live and let live, quit worrying about how other people are playing the game and have fun your own way.

Same theme over and over

[svendsen]

This is a GAME! Bottom line. The company who is hosting the game says here are the rules. You may follow them or not. If you don't like them don't play. Don't try to hide your actions which ruin the game for others (inflation, spam bots, just to name a few) behind this is a real economic model. It's not and never will be. Blizzard may one day pull the plug and everything is gone.

It's funny the justification people will give to break the rules in a simple game even though it does effect others. Yes it effects others and when that happens your justifications are out the window.

Blah blah I don't want to grind..blah blah I don't have time...blah blah blah. Dear complainer Blizzard lets you play for free for 30 days if you can't dedicate the time or effort to play the game play something else. Don't do shit which ruins it for others.

Now back to my little world...

Re:Same theme over and over

[klngarthur]

I suggest you actually look up the definition of an economy.

Re:Same theme over and over

[Anonymous Coward]

"Don't try to hide your actions which ruin the game for others (inflation, spam bots, just to name a few) behind this is a real economic model. It's not and never will be."

Funny, the amount of money involved in RMT kind of says, yes, it is a real economic model.

"Blizzard may one day pull the plug and everything is gone."

Microsoft may one day collapse and all their stock is worthless. What's your point? WoW is hardly the only MMOG out there.

Re:Same theme over and over

[geekoid]

Just because it's in a EULA doesn't mean it is enforceable, moral or legal.

"Don't do shit which ruins it for others. "

gold buying ruins exactly nothing for other players.
Not 1 damn Thing. Big deal, someone gets their mount faster, how does that effect you?
They can buy gear that isn't nearly as good as instance and BoP gear, big f'n deal.

How is some who sells gold farming different then the vast majority of people who do it? If they weren't doing it, the people they sell gold to would have to. So there is no change there.
I make money be selling ore ion the AH. As do a Lot of people, which means the market impact of gold sellers farming is zero.

How is having a bot different then someone hiring someone to do it? It isn't except it keeps the gold prices lower. Sure it may effect you on a moral level, but that doesn't mean the game impact you perceive is actually real

Re:Same theme over and over

[Anonymous Coward]

1. Overarmed/overarmored twinks lack the experience gained from earning their gear and often cause PVE groups to lose due to poor MOB management techniques or a general unfamiliarity with their character.

2. Cheaters who buy gold will always outbid legitimate players on dropped items being sold in auction houses - items that are often rare and required in order to face higher level mobs in new areas between instances.

3. Twinks are a constant problem in PvP because they can muddle past weaker teams with their gear, but lack any sort of experience and often wind up getting their entire team dismantled in higher level play.

But go ahead and keep pretending that when you cheat in a MULTIPLAYER game you're the only player it affects. I'm sure you'll really love it when you idiots finally completely ruin the genre because nobody with any common sense wants to play with you dolts anymore.

Hooboy... I'm gonna get it here

[RaigetheFury]

Before you read let me sum up my points
1) No, I don't think publishers should work with this ass hat
2) Yes, I think a valid player to player auction site would be great but it should be strictly regulated which won't happen. Aka (setup like a bank) because of seller security and buyer security. I do NOT see this happening because this would cause unneccessary costs to the publisher including both support, infrastructure, with no positives unless they got a % of all sales.

A long time ago when Everquest was still at it's prime I used to sell gold (platinum) in game. This was before IGE, before the websites. I'd pop it on ebay and it would sell for a nice price. In fact it was so good that I was making $3000 a month. I didn't farm places that affected others. I didn't camp areas that other people were going. I have the unique luck of being in a top guild, with top gear and able to go to places most couldn't survive. Very few people had a problem with it and it was more of a moral issue at the time. I also did it because I was in college and it sure beat working at Radio Shack or Best Buy.

Today, you can't go anywhere without running into bots or farmers who do nothing all day but that and they do it in ways that affect players by not being able to do a quest or collect items for tradeskills.

The fact of the matter is there is a demand for in game $$. Where there is a demand, there is a supplier. Black Market, underground websites... etc. The sale of gold is not going to stop. Whether it's legal or not, publisher supported or not, or even moral... it's not going to stop. So... how do we deal with the situation?

Now honestly, I haven't sold gold in 5 years, and I play MMORPG's all the time. World of Warcraft and Eve to be specific. People buying gold does NOT AFFECT THE GAME. Stop fooling yourself. World of Warcraft has a unique way of preventing problems that occur in games like Everquest etc. It's called "No Drop" loot. That means you CAN'T buy it. The only way you can get it is to play the game and earn it.

There a very few "epic" level items you can buy but they are DWARFED by the raid won items, or pvp won items. The only thing gold does is let you buy your "epic" mount faster or buy the best droppable equipment for your level.

You will always have people that do not want to spend the time to save up 5000gold for an epic flying mount skill. You will always have people who start on a new server and want to have 1000gold to buy the best equipment for whatever level they are at. Great! We call those twinks and you know how much impact they have? Virtually none. Do you know why? Because ANYONE can go into an instance and get better weapons or armor at the same level.

In World of Warcrafts situation there isn't a huge difference between those who do buy gold and those who don't except the guy who did bought his mount faster. You have to be level 70 to get a flying mount and if you don't have 900 gold by then... uh stop spending it on random crap, do some quests, you'll have it in no time. OH and you know the difference between you and the guy who bought 5000 gold online? He's 250% faster in the air. That's it. You can get to the same places he can, you can do everything he can.

Now, Eve is a different situation. It's entirely financially based. You can change the course of a war with enough money (ISK). Who's fault is that? It's the weakness AND the strength of how the world of Eve is setup. However, to truly be powerful you have to have the skills. While you can buy the skills, the truly powerful items, ship plans are dropped by enemies in high level areas. The money will get you there but the skill is required to keep you there. It's much more complicated than that but for this discussion it's sufficient.

You can disagree with me but I was in the business, and these are the facts of life. Not everyone wants to do the grind. I personally like it. I've been at the top and you know what? It's boring once you've beaten it all. You tend to sell gold then.

Re:Hooboy... I'm gonna get it here

[Maxo-Texas]

One problem is that people who would have won and should quit the game stay and sell no-drop items (and flags) to people.

It directly affects me because as a result- people who pay money (like township rebellion-- the best guild money can buy) set how difficult the encounters are for me- trailing in their uber dust. The developers sit and watch them (with literally the best gear money can buy- including no drop loot) and set the encounter difficulty so it can only be beat if you have gear that might take 100 hours a week to collect (which you can do if you are buying part of the loot).

I'm playing legitimately- and because cheaters are setting the bar so high (including using programs like macroquest but hey once you cheat one way, you can justify any amount of cheating) I face content that is almost broken in difficulty. The fact that they look at the datastream and run straight to the rare mob prevents me from keying up for certain zones (and that includes cock-blocking back in the 2004 period which prevented a lot of other customers from getting to certain content).

So yes- cheating impacts me constantly and every day. And it impacts the customers. More and more of our members refuse to buy the new expansions because all the content is over a year away from being usable.

Re:Hooboy... I'm gonna get it here

[Anonymous Coward]

World of Warcraft has a unique way of preventing problems that occur in games like Everquest etc. It's called "No Drop" loot

Oddly enough, Everquest invented "no drop" loot before WoW even existed, and in fact that very term comes from the text that used to be displayed on the icon for items with that bit set.

Re:Hooboy... I'm gonna get it here

[Anonymous Coward]

"World of Warcraft has a unique way of preventing problems that occur in games like Everquest etc. It's called "No Drop" loot. That means you CAN'T buy it. The only way you can get it is to play the game and earn it."

Ironically, the term "NODROP" was applied in EQ1, in WoW those are referred to as "Bind on Pickup" items. (The irony is that you say NODROP is unique to WoW, to resolve problems from EQ1.)

Also, you say you farmed and sold plat in EQ1 without affecting anyone else. I call bullshit, simply because that was physically impossible in EQ1, it not being instanced, until the advent of LDoN. Most of the "high end" areas required huge raids to be successful in, so you were affecting *them* with your farming, if nobody else.

You helped people cheat, good for you, don't try to dress it up. Cheating detracts from the fun in the game, by providing the type of players, that would rather buy items/gold/characters/levels than figure out how to earn them, more in-game power.

Re:Hooboy... I'm gonna get it here

[analog_line]

I agree completely about the RMT basically being a wash in World of Warcraft. In Everquest, Dark Age of Camelot, and other games where Souldbound items didn't exist (or existed in very limited amounts...Camelot epic armor was no drop iirc).

Everyone in a MMO is a farmer. The people who complain about those that engage in RMT generally comes from people pissed off that someone else is farming where they want to be farming. Personally, I just decided to look where the farmers aren't or can't be, and attack those markets. I make a ton of gold on stuff no farmer bothers to touch.

Re:Hooboy... I'm gonna get it here

[Grail]

I think Blizzard needs to wise up and cash in on the market that they've created.

There's a WoW Mastercard. Why can't they have a novel rewards program - spend $100 on your WoW Mastercard, get 100g in game! It's better than any other reward point system out there because there is no negotiation to be made with third party suppliers, no real money cost to the company, and a very big incentive to get people to use your Mastercard programme.

If the gold was so easily available from the game publisher, the RMT market would evaporate. Who would you trust more - this website in China asking for your credit card details, or Blizzard offering you in-game money when you make your regular groceries and comestibles purchase using your WoW Mastercard?

On the other hand, a player-to-player RMT system would allow me to turn my addiction into some extra drinks money...

Bad omen

[shaitand]

'As to your question about income tax, because our typical seller is earning roughly enough to pay for his WoW subscription, we see selling on Sparter as analogous to selling on eBay, putting on a garage sale, or running a great lemonade stand.'

Yes and someone who profits from selling gold is ALREADY required to pay income taxes in accordance with the laws in their jurisdiction. Nobody is concerned about that.

My wife has a number of level 70 characters in wow, they have very valuable epic gear and her characters make and burn through boatloads of gold. She might buy a small amount of starting gold if she wants to start play on a new server (being poor sucks) but otherwise doesn't engage in gold trade.

I don't want to live in a world where my wife is taxed in the real world for being successful in a game. This service turns virtual currency into another form of actual currency. Currently if my wife earns 10,000 gold in a game she isn't taxed because it is funny money. This turns the funny money into currency and when you earn currency you are required to pay income tax on it, this would make earning golds no less taxable than earning any other foreign currency like euros.

Honestly I see no problem with in-game transfers, the point of the game is to get past all forms of grind (including farming) as quickly as possible so that you can get to raids and actual gaming. This lets those who have the means skip the boring grind crap that gets in the way of the gameplay. Honestly, I think the problem is that game publishers fail to act BY REMOVING THE GRIND when they see people buying gold and/or items to avoid said grind.

Re:Bad omen

[RaigetheFury]

Like I said here

http://games.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=242543&c id=19679213

But I believe you're missing the point. What YOU call grind isn't grind to everyone else. From your standpoint you think everything below lvl 70 is grind.. and anything non raiding is a grind. By that logic (which I'm assuming you realize is bad) why don't they just start you at lvl 70 and fully keyed, and then you just head off to instances.

Back to the subject. The point is a lot of people want a cheap fast way to get to the top without earning it. Gold just lets you get there faster but you STILL have to hit the same number of mobs earning the same amount of XP. You still have to do those quests to get keyed. Me... I like the journey more than the end. So buying gold is pointless to and many like me.

It's very open-ended as to what "grind" is. Different for everyone.

Re:Bad omen

[teasea]

Yes and someone who profits from selling gold is ALREADY required to pay income taxes in accordance with the laws in their jurisdiction. Nobody is concerned about that.

That about covers it. If tax agencies want more monitoring of this, it will suck for the publisher, but until real money changes hands, there is nothing to tax. If such insanity (taxing in-game gold and items) actually manages to become a law? I never thought I'd have these toons forever. It all gets deleted and I take up another hobby. But I seriously think this is unlikely. Games are a big enough industry to afford lobbyists who can whisper "this will hurt our bottom line," in the right ears.

Re:Bad omen

[shaitand]

'why don't they just start you at lvl 70 and fully keyed, and then you just head off to instances.'

Because you have to learn how to play the game and your character. That is why I suggested shortening the process to a couple days worth of playing.

'the top without earning it'

Of course they do. This is a game not a job. Let's leave the 'earning' part at the office and skip right to playing like we do with other games.

'It's very open-ended as to what "grind" is. Different for everyone.'

Sure, there are some people who enjoy having a job and working as well. The fact is that the current system only caters to those with your idea of grinding where a system that allowed transfers would cater to everyone. Hate leveling? Buy a 70. Hate farming (and most farmers are regular players, not bots or sweat shops) then buy the gold for your epic mount instead of farming it yourself.

I played the first real MMORPG, Sierra's 'The Realm', long before EQ was a twinkle in anyone's eye. There was no gold trade to speak of. Everything was still camped, the economy was still always inflated, people still macro'd, people still hacked and duped, etc. These games are built around the concept of grinding for gain. The idea of genuine challenges and puzzles was removed long ago (although it is present to small degree in WOW when teams try to devise the solutions to slaying bosses on raids) and replaced with repetative tasks that anyone could complete but if you spend days and days performing these repetative tasks that are all essentially the same you can achieve any end in the game.

Real money transfers don't hurt the game, they just give people something else to blame for the same old problems. Someone camping your spot? Must be a sweat shop farmer. Join a pickup ground and get someone who speaks poor english? Damn gold farmers. Couldn't be one of the many non-english speakers who play on US servers but don't farm gold. And the camper couldn't be one of the MILLIONS of legitimate players farming for one of the many things the game forces you to farm to gain eh?

Stop and think about it a minute. In a game like WoW, when would you buy gold? When you need gold. If you don't have the gold but you need the gold, then how are you going to get said gold? You are going go farm it at the most profitable spot you can think of. If you buy it from a gold shop, how did they get it? They farmed it and probably managed to get it with LESS farming than it would have taken you, thus less camping. If the only time a farmer can make a sale is when you would have needed to farm anyway the net effect is the same or less farming than if the players were doing it themselves.

Too bad I was too late to ask a question

[Opportunist]

Mine would have been "Gold sellers keep mailing, /tell'ing and otherwise pestering me. And others. And from a few postings on a few boards, I gather that I'm not the only one who would considering 'hanging goldsellers from their testicles' as a suitable punishment. Care to give me a good reason why I shouldn't write a DDoS program, distribute it to everyone involved (i.e. all players of a variety of MMORPGs) and blast the advertised server into oblivion?"

And no, "legality" doesn't matter. A DDoS is legal where I live. What you must not do is use unwilling participants (i.e. sheeps), but if the person agrees (and, call it a hunch, I'd bet a few people wouldn't mind running that DDoS program while they're sleeping) it's surprisingly legal.

Re:Too bad I was too late to ask a question

[BarneyL]

Mine would have been "Gold sellers keep mailing, /tell'ing and otherwise pestering me. And others. And from a few postings on a few boards, I gather that I'm not the only one who would considering 'hanging goldsellers from their testicles' as a suitable punishment. Care to give me a good reason why I shouldn't write a DDoS program, distribute it to everyone involved (i.e. all players of a variety of MMORPGs) and blast the advertised server into oblivion?"

Well if you were to RTFA you'd notice they claim they don't advertise their service in game. I suspect their answer would be "Please feel take down our in game spamming competitors' web sites it will drive more gold buyers to our site".

Re:Too bad I was too late to ask a question

[Opportunist]

My pleasure...

Why dont they

[Kaeles]

Do it like eve-online?
They have a built in system where people can buy GMT's (or game time codes that are for a month or 2 or 3 of play.) and sell them in the game. This allows people to "sell" their "moneys" in the game and CCP (eve's makers) still get money out of it.
To me it seems like the best way to handle things. /me shrugs.

Interesting dilemma

[edremy]

Everyone hates gold sellers and farmers. But we had an interesting question in our WoW guild a few months back.

The guild leader was absurdly hardcore for a while. She had a number of lvl60 characters and had time to farm like a zombie. She also learned to play the auction house like a piano, cornering markets and the like. The end result was that she had something over 100,000 GP- *before* the expansion. It was so much gold she couldn't even transfer the characters between servers since you can only move something like 10k gold/char.

She had started anew on our server and didn't know what to do with the old toons. She checked a gold seller site and it came out that they would offer her something over $10k for the gold. So she asked us if she should sell.

I think the answer was a unanimous "Of course! You'd be stupid not to." I don't know what ever happened- she's on long term leave right now finishing a dissertation so perhaps she sold everything :^)

Re:Interesting dilemma

[geekoid]

"Everyone hates gold sellers and farmers."

Not true, many people really don't care, cause in WoW the gold sellers have very little impact on play.

In EQ they had a huge impact because they would camp mobs that would drop loot. Creating instances stopped that problem.

Most people say that in increases the AH prices, but that is a fallacy based on a lack of economic knowledge or experiences.

It's happening anyway

[Colin Smith]

The game companies should create in game marketplaces where legitimate trading can take place with stalls and places to advertise (boy they're missing a trick there) and yes, currency exchanges can take place. Stick them on the borders of the land or something.

As for tax. Well, income is income, it doesn't really matter where the source is.

Fantasy World Mafia

[Ub3rT3Rr0R1St]

In spite of his evident PR slurring to make the "dark" market of RMT out to be the publisher's and hacker's/farmer's/duper's fault, and his dodging of definite answers, I think, and I'm sure most can agree, that this will definitely open up the doors for what I will so fittingly deem: "The Fantasy World Mafia".

It is clear that with this company's poor planning, security measures, and currency issues, they've practically paved a road for large scale money laundry in a fantasy environment. This being pointed out by people's comments on: "What's to stop the dupers from turning their fake gold into real currency?". The answer? Absolutely nothing.

In the world of the internet, anonimity is the number one cause of fraudulence, and I believe this will be one of its biggest spotlights. Honestly, how easy is it to make a few "legitimate" accounts, spread some duped gold across them, and sell it at varying prices to avoid suspicion? Hell, I just thought of it, and I'm no genius, so what's to stop more sinister masterminds from putting this into play? Maybe even in a more crafty manner?

This is a business they're proposing, and with every business there is corruption. They're not really doing anything about it. So imagine: The US Government has trouble with the Mafia, even with all their resources, laws, ect. What the HELL can this company do other than speculate on whose conducting business illicitly, when they don't even have a third of the Government's resources, not to mention the barrier of net-anonimity?

They seriously need to reconsider their agenda and business strategies before coming into such an easily manipulated market. With their current dealings and such, they're setting themselves up for major trouble in the future.

Not worthy of real estate in slashdot

[ao_coder]

I see this as a good way to stop spammers. Bot farmers and hackers will not be filtered out by this system (it is too easy to be your own cut-out). Their claim that gamers would sell gold for cheaper than a business in (for example) china seemed either naive or duplicitious. People in countries with a much lower cost of living will have a market advantage that edge out the gamers in the countries where a $15/month game and computer system is an affordable luxury. Responses seemed (no surprise) just a way to promote their service, and their responses disingenous. However, if I were to buy gold, I'd consider their service because the prices do seem cheap, and they should successfully combat one of the three evils they claim to be against. TBH I don't believe there IS a way to stop hackers pillaging accounts, and think that the game company is the one to combat bots. So if sparter, as a seller, pledges not to spam, that is about as much as I can expect from them.

Translation

[radimvice]

I've translated the corporate-speak into English that's a little less TLDR, while still trying to keep a neutral tone:

Q: Is this whole 'ask question' thing just a marketing ploy?
A: Of course it is, but we also really do care about our mission which is to put a bright light on RMT.

Q: Isn't this against WoW's rules, won't your "customers" get banned?
A: Here's how we see it: Blizz doesn't have the right to tell legitimate gamers that they can't trade real money outside the game. We're trying to change the whole system to acknowledge this, but until then we can only warn people of the risk of getting banned.

Q: How do you intend to avoid a lawsuit from Blizzard?
A: Reasons we don't think we'll get sued: (1) Blizz realizes that they don't have the right to ban people for deals that happen outside of the game. (2) Blizz would be screwed if they lost in court so they wouldn't take the risk. (3) Blizz knows lawsuits aren't the solution anyway, it'll only keep the businesses out of the US jurisdiction.

Q: How will you stop professional gold farmers from selling gold using your service instead of 'legitimate' gamers?
A: We can't prevent them outright because we have no way of tracking them (Blizz should help us out here!), but our service will give real gamers a chance to compete in a fair market.

Q: How are you going to convince the MMO big-wigs that RMT is okay?
A: We're trying to convince them that the shady aspects of grey-market gold-farming (such as 'spamming, bot farming, hacking and duping') that are usually associated with RMT don't need to be.

Q: How will you protect sellers who get scammed by lying buyers?
A: Our first goal is to protect the buyer. All we can do to lying buyers is look for obvious scammers and ban them from our service (Blizz should help us out here!).

Q: How will you stop the middleman exploiting the workers? What about the goldfarming sweatshops?
A: Since anyone can sell gold through our service directly, gamers can go into business for themselves easier. And the whole 'sweatshop' thing is blown out of proportion, gold farmers are usually voluntary workers that are paid competitive wages compared to other jobs available in rural China, nobody is being unfairly exploited.

Q: What "state-of-the-art technology" are you using to stop fraud?
A: Umm, we ban people who we are pretty sure are scamming.

Q: Can I convert currency between games? How will you protect against a single person controlling the market?
A: You can't convert directly, but you can (obviously) sell one currency and buy another in USD. The "control of the market" question is pointless in a game where more gold can always be farmed.

Q: What about taxes? Is the IRS going to come knocking in the future?
A: We can't give official tax advice, and the issue of online taxes goes far beyond MMORPGs. But think of a gamer selling a bit of gold through our service like someone selling an item on eBay.

If I wanted FPS mechanics,

[Brownstar]

I'd play an FPS.

I happen to like the game mechanics in PVE MMO's.

While there's nothing wrong with enjoying playing a twitch based game, I personally don't enjoy it as much.

Currently I play WoW. As for the grind in WoW, you only have to do that as much as you want to. Only real "grinding" I ever did was leveling up to 60 and then to 70.

Most of 0 to 60 was fun, because it was new. Personally I hated leveling from 60 to 70. I will probably never reroll another toon, because I don't enjoy leveling.

But, now that I'm at the end game (and it's really not *that* hard to get a toon to 70), I do 0 grinding.

I log on 1/2 an hour or so before my raid, repair, check my mail. By regents, and then go plan.

I spend maybe another hour per week, buying Mats for Primal Cloth on the Auction House, transmute them, and sell the Cloth to pay for all of my raiding expenses: repairs and mats for pots primarily.

Most of the people in my guild are the same way. Now I don't have too many shiny toys that I've bought (no epic mount for me), but I play to have fun, and I do.

Tax Problem?

[Derosian]

Since the US government is not the head of these virtual worlds, they cannot tax the virtual businesses for goods unless you pay for them with American currency. They wouldn't suddenly decide Mexico has to pay American Taxed would they?

Re:Tax Problem?

[greginterrupted]

Countries other than the U.S. also have taxes! The player is at the mercy of his or her government to be taxed for buying or selling goods. Even though Blizzard is in the U.S, The players using Blizzard's servers will (or could be) taxed by their own governments in their own countries but not by the U.S. Government. Unless the U.S. or another country puts tariffs on overseas "trade" of virtual currency. That's a whole other issue.

Easy fix

[Synn]

If the IRS wants to tax gold earned in WoW, then just pay them with WoW gold :)

Re:The only people who cry they have "rights"...

[jeffasselin]

If you continue to vote for Bush & friends, don't worry, you won't have any rights to complain about soon enough.

This is not even wrong

[beldraen]

Not trying to be mean, here, it is just that there is a lot of "common sense" going around in these debates that is just not correct.

First, the government will never be interested in taxing virtual goods because it already does. Taxable income is, roughly speaking, any increase in wealth not derived by previous obligation. Any time you get a dinner from a friend that is taxable income. Any time you get a pair of tickets you won off of the local radio station that is taxable income. Again, any time you do something for benefit (tangible or not) where you did not gain an obligation (i.e. you loaned money) it is taxable income.

Now, the reality is that a lot of income is not worth the effort to track, nor even necessary. If I recall, if non-disclosed income is less than $800 for the year, I.R.S. doesn't care. What the I.R.S. does care about is if people have a significant ability to hide income through an institution. This is why banks have to report your transactions to the I.R.S. This is why investment firms have to report transactions to the I.R.S. The I.R.S. wants to know.

What congress is considering is that any company that looks like a bank, act likes a bank, and quacks like a bank should be considered a bank. In the case of Second Life, they maintain an exchange, allow transactions to and from U.S. currency, and store currency. If their market is large enough, the concern is not taxable income, but the means to use said market to hide the income. This is why congress is looking at requirements from Ebay because there are people's whose whole income is cash and can be hidden from the I.R.S.

So, first point, congress isn't interested in taxing virtual goods in games, they want to tax the benefit individuals get in trades that meet with U.S. currency, as they always have. Your bank metaphor does not follow.

Next, you are mixing service with property. While there are a lot of questions lingering over what people can and cannot do with your property (and whether or not you actually got property in the transaction for buying that MP3), services are quite a bit more clear. There are basically three things that can stop a contract: You cannot sign away your ability to litigate. You can always go the courts; however, a judge may rule that the requirements for a specific venue (i.e. arbitration) are acceptable, rules the contract valid, and does not interfere. You cannot sign for actions that are illegal. Finally, the contract must be with conscience and consideration. Both parties must get something (but not necessarily equal in value) and the contract cannot be simply one-sided.

Blizzard can and does have the right to terminate users for trading outside of the game. Hell, Blizzard has the right to terminate because they don't like you. You have the right to seek wrongful termination of service in small claims court, if you so choose. In the end, Blizzard is a service for playing in their game world. You can tack on all the ideas about how much it is worth to some to play, it Blizzard's game is still treated as a service. Blizzard doesn't look like a bank, doesn't act like a bank, doesn't talk like a bank. You're mixing property with service. Blizzard's terms of service means you do not possess anything. While some people may feel the desire to exchange money for something you do not own, it doesn't stop your relationship to Blizzard from being a service. But when you do trade money, the government's interest in taxation show up.

Re:This is not even wrong

[WNight]

There's a prevailing legal belief that you can sell a service, then for any reason, refuse to provide that service...

As was mentioned, there may be an EULA forbidding certain actions, but it's not clear that a contract for use of a service can dictate your ability to charge money for an otherwise legal thing. Especially since the contract is one-sided and obviously from an unequal balance of power.

It's as silly as if a PvP game that decided talking to someone outside the game (icq, msn, voip, etc) was cheating and attempted to kick anyone who did it. They simply don't have the right to dictate who you communicate with and outside of certain competitions. To terminate someone's account for this reason is then theft and extortion. The gamer paid for the service, but it's being withheld unlawfully to enforce compliance in something outside the scope of a legal contract.

Blizzard has a history of releasing games that don't work due to copy protection and refusing to fix the issue. I discussed the issue (Diablo I think) with them, they suggested I buy a new CDROM (my burner was freaking it out), I suggested I crack the game. They told me I was breaking the law, I told them to try to sue me. Still no lawsuit so I can only assume they're liars about everything. Rather than letting me employ a work-around to make a game work, or provide a work-around on their own, they tried to scare me through baseless legal threats into giving up.

WOW seems like more of the same, but you pay on an ongoing basis... Besides, I use a debugger and other programming tools on a daily basis, they'd probably just terminate my service for hacking or something.

Re:This is not even wrong

[beldraen]

When it is a pure service, you can. You go to a bar, you can be kicked out. You go to a restaurant, you can get kicked out. What you are confusing is when you create an on-going relationship for a commercial benefit. Termination of service then becomes an economic hardship (i.e. if you create a business reselling WoW account from Blizzard and suddenly Blizzard refuses to sell you more accounts despite contractual agreement THEN you have a case.)

As for the crack, it is against the law. The DMCA clearly defines cracking their software is illegal. I don't agree with it either, but you are still not in the right. Second, you're confusing the felony (criminal) with tort (civil). Cracking the software a criminal offense, which must be brought via the government. If you were selling copies of their software, it is a copyright violation, which is a tort. Modification of a piece of software for compatibility is legal and within copyright. This is why they won't sue you. The most they can do is attempt to get your prosecuted.

Your dislike Blizzard or their policies or their games is irrelevant.

Re:This is not even wrong

[WNight]

Well, the DMCA doesn't affect me, unless I travel to the USA. Generic copyright/sale law allows modification of anything you own. I meant 'sue' in the generic sense you tell someone who threatens you with something completely baseless.

"They" (restaurant, Blizzard, etc) can terminate a contract at any time, but if it was done for unacceptable reasons (extortion, etc) it's illegal in a larger sense and also carries potential civil penalties. Perhaps you can be kicked out of a concert for inappropriate dress, but if they let you in there looking like it and ejected you for it later, they're in the wrong.

Blizzard refuses to discuss this, frequently is wrong (read all the wrongfully banned blogs), and never gives a refund, especially of your related costs. As I see it, this is as illegal as if your landlord kicked you out for a violation he knew before you moved in (had a pet, perhaps). You'd have a pretty good claim at not paying outstanding rent, getting the damage deposit back, getting free rent at the next place, and free moving. In fact, if your character, chat logs, etc, is your data, then this is theft.

Blizzard and AtBatt are the two companies I've dealt with that have gone so far as totally failing to provide a product, both have immediately turned and tried to blame me for their complex post-sale restrictions. Liars and scum...

WTF??

[Anonymous Coward]

Sparter Executives:
Good question. Here's how we see it: publishers do not have the right to tell gamers that they can't accept money from someone outside of the game Wait, so Sparter is telling me that if I am THE creator of the game, and they decide to barter real money for in game currency that I have no right to stop them? What is that supposed to mean? that as a sole creator, I can't impose my own rules on it? Who the hell is Sparter, God?

One BIG Glaring Hole...

[Plekto]

I looked at their site and I saw that they scan other sites.

quote:
  Why do you list prices for other sites?

We crawl a number of retail sites to provide our visitors with an accurate view of pricing in the market; these sites neither provide their pricing data to us directly nor pay us to list them. In some cases we may collect referral fees from listed sites, but we do not restrict our listings to sites that offer such programs. At any given time one of our sellers may or may not have the best price in the market, but part of our objective is to be your first stop when shopping for virtual currency. All external price data is labeled with an indication of how recently it was retrieved from the target site.

****
So essentially, because they let in other, non-verified sources, it's exactly as unsafe and bad as the other sites. The only way to get rid of bots and farmers is this:

- Each person has an account verified through secure ID or similar - like Ebay does. This is in addition to the Paypal/etc account.

- Each person can trade X per month, max. The limit should be equivalent to no more than 2-3 months average work in the game. For instance, in EVE online, that would be 50 mil per month.

- There needs to be a strict limit on the number of trades per year as well.

- Each person can only have one account. Attempts at duplicate accounts will result in a permanent ban. Get Paypal and the like involved as well to help on the double-checking, of course - I'm sure they would be glad to help.

Currently it has none of these very rudimentary safeguards in place(there are others to be sure, but thses need to be the bare minimum at least). Yes, call them restrictions if you want, but individuals don't have years worth of money to throw around on a monthly basis - only farmers and the like do.

As it is, it's more of the same B.S.

Re:The only people who cry they have "rights"...

[Anonymous Coward]

FUCK YOU