Not entirly true. While the popularity of the game determines the demand for the items, it does not determine their intrinsic value.
For example people may think that water is the best thing ever since sex, but its pure abandance does not make it the most expensive resource.
The underlying value of the item depends more on the skill and time required to attain it. Those that require simple time investment will fall in price over time as more and more people spend time playing the game (That and MOST people would rather play for item than bey it). Those that require skill will be more stable since the gradient of skill stays reletivley constant through the game play.
If you can not tell the difference between a newbie with a trust fund and a legitimate player, I have to seriosly question you knowlage of that particular game.
As somebody who has played EverQuest at hiegh levels I can tell you with absolute certanty that an ebayers does not have a snow balls chance in hall of hiding the fact. An expirienced player will pickup on a dozen ques, from the reletive position of the character, to timing in responses both to the world and other players and not the least of all questions and comments.
Think of it as hiring an English Major for system level development. His lack of knowlage and etiquete will stand out like a sore thumb within minutes for anybody worth their salt.
Anyway, there is nothing wrong in practice in principle. If somebody is able to buy an account and play it with skill that the level demands, what is the difference?
This is a perfectly natural turn of events. This has happend with every MMORGP ever released. Items and characters themselves are a comodity and represent the time spent by players achieving them. The fact that they're sold does not,with-in itself, mean that players are bored, or that the game itself is boring or that G. Lucast is out to make money. This is simply players choosing what parts of the game they want to expirience and how.
No doubt the reason Sony is against these auctions is to reduce their liability. If they admit that the items have real cash value, they are open to a damage law suit the moment they ban somebody or the server crashes and players loose some items.
However, from the player prespective, this kind of thing is vital. I would not even touch a game that does not have a healthy economic system both in game and in reality. Not because I'd want to use it, but because a stable economy shows that the game is well balanced and alive.
As a side note, 250$ does not really sound like a lot. Especially considering that prices right at the game release are several orders of magnitude greater than they will be in couple of months, per item. Probably per time invested it works out.
Am I the only one who is annoyed by people throwing around phrases like "Digital Pearl Harbor"?
What in the world would that be? Do they expect every computer to burst aflame and melt into a puddle?
Or maybe more sensibly they mean wide scale security breach, oh like Code Red 1 through Code Red n.
The first is just stupid, the later has been happenning on monthly bases for the last 3 years. And yet it doesn't seem to count as "Digital Pearl Harbor".
So perhaps somebody would like to enlighten me as to what in hell they're expecting?
There is one big problem with going after the people who support spam.
And that is this: If I have a competitor A, to cause them problems I just spam 30 million people in their name, linking to their website and products. Not only will a bunch of feral geeks be on their case, but they will also have to face a government investigation. All of which will no doubt incure financial losses even if they're not guilty.
I have studied ICQ protocol about a year and a half ago in some detail.
At the time the clients would try to estabilish a direct TCP connection amongst themselves as best they could, even for a single message, only resorting to a using the server for relay if:
a) both of the clients are behind a firewall
b) One of the clients disabled this feature not to reviel his/her IP address.
Of course in my expirience a) is very often the case these days.
BTW: Trillian Is an excellent ICQ/AIM/MSN/Yahoo client which supports Blowfish encryptions on any of these protocols if the other client is also using Trillian.
Before you say that nobody would ever build something as purely evil as the system in question, think about this: Somebody writes the spamming software.
I disagree strongly. Certanly Neo gets his amazing kung-fu skills, he gets to fly about and his spider-sence in the matrix, but ultimatly it gets him nothing. Using all his powers, during the entire film he has achieved NOTHING, save for surviving a fight or saving a friend. He hasn't even killed a single agent.
In fact everything his did, save for last 5 minutes of the movie, is perfectly in line with what the machines expected and allowed him to do. The only thing that will bring him power is the understanding of the choices he must make. In essence his must out-smart the machine who created the Matrix. In that is the risk and the challange of the movie and not in meaningless, but very entertaining, fights.
lol, I think this is thinking a bit too much ahead, but what the hell.
I think this kind of system is very good at error correction and false positives. Because think about it, it is composed of personal aquantances. Each person has a friend list. If a message does not come from that friend list, it is very likely to be discarded. So you pretty much HAVE to bribe insiders.
Now, suppose you bribe a number of lusty friends with promices to meet the prince. It will become fairly obvious to all the first tier reciepents of this message that this particular person is giving negatives all the time. Thus their credibility will be reduces and their alamrs will not propogate.
I imagine such system would single out trouble makers fairly quickly, probably even after several false alarms in a row.
Of course one could just start faking message from every member of the system to all their friends. But I think if this abuse of power ever got out, prince would have a lot more to worry about than screaming girls : )
On the bright side, maybe it will bring encryptions to the masses out of the need to have trusted and verified messages!
...What this would create a Partial Reinforcement effect. As any behavioral psychologist can tell you a behavior that gets reinforced partially at random intervals will happen much more often than behavior reinforced every time.
A classic example of this would be a brat crying for candy. If parents give in every now and then, this child will cry only more often and more intensily whenever (s)he wants something.
If those "lusty ladies" could not be sure that the message they got was the real one, there would be the oposite effect, a rush to that spot to be the first to confirm weather or not it is true. And those times when it is not, will only fuel the hunger for the next chance.
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So ... How do I mod the story itself -5 Troll?
Not entirly true. While the popularity of the game determines the demand for the items, it does not determine their intrinsic value.
For example people may think that water is the best thing ever since sex, but its pure abandance does not make it the most expensive resource.
The underlying value of the item depends more on the skill and time required to attain it. Those that require simple time investment will fall in price over time as more and more people spend time playing the game (That and MOST people would rather play for item than bey it). Those that require skill will be more stable since the gradient of skill stays reletivley constant through the game play.
If you can not tell the difference between a newbie with a trust fund and a legitimate player, I have to seriosly question you knowlage of that particular game. As somebody who has played EverQuest at hiegh levels I can tell you with absolute certanty that an ebayers does not have a snow balls chance in hall of hiding the fact. An expirienced player will pickup on a dozen ques, from the reletive position of the character, to timing in responses both to the world and other players and not the least of all questions and comments. Think of it as hiring an English Major for system level development. His lack of knowlage and etiquete will stand out like a sore thumb within minutes for anybody worth their salt. Anyway, there is nothing wrong in practice in principle. If somebody is able to buy an account and play it with skill that the level demands, what is the difference?
If these people are at all related to EverQuest sellers it will take more than silly Jedi tricks to turn their nose from profit : )
This is a perfectly natural turn of events.
This has happend with every MMORGP ever released. Items and characters themselves are a comodity and represent the time spent by players achieving them. The fact that they're sold does not,with-in itself, mean that players are bored, or that the game itself is boring or that G. Lucast is out to make money. This is simply players choosing what parts of the game they want to expirience and how.
No doubt the reason Sony is against these auctions is to reduce their liability. If they admit that the items have real cash value, they are open to a damage law suit the moment they ban somebody or the server crashes and players loose some items.
However, from the player prespective, this kind of thing is vital. I would not even touch a game that does not have a healthy economic system both in game and in reality. Not because I'd want to use it, but because a stable economy shows that the game is well balanced and alive.
As a side note, 250$ does not really sound like a lot. Especially considering that prices right at the game release are several orders of magnitude greater than they will be in couple of months, per item. Probably per time invested it works out.
Am I the only one who is annoyed by people throwing around phrases like "Digital Pearl Harbor"?
What in the world would that be? Do they expect every computer to burst aflame and melt into a puddle?
Or maybe more sensibly they mean wide scale security breach, oh like Code Red 1 through Code Red n.
The first is just stupid, the later has been happenning on monthly bases for the last 3 years. And yet it doesn't seem to count as "Digital Pearl Harbor".
So perhaps somebody would like to enlighten me as to what in hell they're expecting?
There is one big problem with going after the people who support spam.
And that is this: If I have a competitor A, to cause them problems I just spam 30 million people in their name, linking to their website and products. Not only will a bunch of feral geeks be on their case, but they will also have to face a government investigation. All of which will no doubt incure financial losses even if they're not guilty.
I have studied ICQ protocol about a year and a half ago in some detail.
At the time the clients would try to estabilish a direct TCP connection amongst themselves as best they could, even for a single message, only resorting to a using the server for relay if: a) both of the clients are behind a firewall b) One of the clients disabled this feature not to reviel his/her IP address.
Of course in my expirience a) is very often the case these days.
BTW: Trillian Is an excellent ICQ/AIM/MSN/Yahoo client which supports Blowfish encryptions on any of these protocols if the other client is also using Trillian.
Before you say that nobody would ever build something as purely evil as the system in question, think about this: Somebody writes the spamming software.
I disagree strongly. Certanly Neo gets his amazing kung-fu skills, he gets to fly about and his spider-sence in the matrix, but ultimatly it gets him nothing. Using all his powers, during the entire film he has achieved NOTHING, save for surviving a fight or saving a friend. He hasn't even killed a single agent. In fact everything his did, save for last 5 minutes of the movie, is perfectly in line with what the machines expected and allowed him to do. The only thing that will bring him power is the understanding of the choices he must make. In essence his must out-smart the machine who created the Matrix. In that is the risk and the challange of the movie and not in meaningless, but very entertaining, fights.
lol, I think this is thinking a bit too much ahead, but what the hell. I think this kind of system is very good at error correction and false positives. Because think about it, it is composed of personal aquantances. Each person has a friend list. If a message does not come from that friend list, it is very likely to be discarded. So you pretty much HAVE to bribe insiders. Now, suppose you bribe a number of lusty friends with promices to meet the prince. It will become fairly obvious to all the first tier reciepents of this message that this particular person is giving negatives all the time. Thus their credibility will be reduces and their alamrs will not propogate. I imagine such system would single out trouble makers fairly quickly, probably even after several false alarms in a row. Of course one could just start faking message from every member of the system to all their friends. But I think if this abuse of power ever got out, prince would have a lot more to worry about than screaming girls : ) On the bright side, maybe it will bring encryptions to the masses out of the need to have trusted and verified messages!
...What this would create a Partial Reinforcement effect. As any behavioral psychologist can tell you a behavior that gets reinforced partially at random intervals will happen much more often than behavior reinforced every time.
A classic example of this would be a brat crying for candy. If parents give in every now and then, this child will cry only more often and more intensily whenever (s)he wants something.
If those "lusty ladies" could not be sure that the message they got was the real one, there would be the oposite effect, a rush to that spot to be the first to confirm weather or not it is true. And those times when it is not, will only fuel the hunger for the next chance.