I get what your saying forsure.The only way i could see that working is if blizzard is getting every single gold farmer in thier game, every time they do a banning. I doubt if they even scratch the surface. its probally nothing more than a minor inconvenience for them at best.

As far as WoW and Rmt i would say that when i played it didnt affect me atall, Yes ive grouped with people that it seemed like they might have bought thier toon. I could be wrong might have been a younger child playing mom or dads account? And who dosent love finding a bot and than screwing with them for an hour or so. Great entertainment.

I think for me anyways Livegamer will not affect my enjoyment of Vanguard. I dont pay real money for anything in any game, and no one in my guild will either. And where not packing up and leaving because of it. Will stay the course and see what affect if any it has on our play style.

Originally posted by Orphes

 

Disagreeing makes one into an adversary... you are with me or you are against me. Make your choice.

 

Only a sith deals in absolutes.

The bannings have had a lot of effect and at times have crippled the gold sellers.  If I recall right a few of the bigger companies folded as a result of their losses, but in time new companies come up.  Supply/demand if you will. 

It is very unlikely any company will get every single seller, but I recall when blizzard did one massive wave of bans, the farmers were so desperate they were soliciting players to buy gold from them just to have something to sell.  The ingame spam is gone as far as I can tell.   No more spam emails in game about sales.  This is just speculation, but I doubt rmt in wow is as big as it was in years past due to blizzards efforts.  The introduction of daily quests has also taken a bite out of the farming market since players have a decent way to make money outside more traditional methods.  

The problem is that companies are not twarting the demand side of the issue.  Getting in bed with the sellers by legitimizing those actions in game seems to going in the wrong direction.  I don't think the economy of the game needed something like this or that the VG players are the type who really get into RMT.   

I have no doubt soe is doing this as part of their testing for future games and VG doesn't matter to them at all.  The game is never going to be anything of worth to soe as far as revenue goes.  It really shows a lack of respect on soes part. 

Please execuse my ignorance on this issue.  I read through the entire thread, and I am a little confused.

If possible can you enlighten me as to how plat farming impacts an in-game economy?

I understand it is a violation of the EULA, and that it is a bannable offense.  I also understand that those that buy plat are considered lazy or cheaters by the player base.  What I don't quite understand is how it really affects the in-game economy.

If player 'A' decides he wants to buy a new Uber Sword of Destruction on the marketplace, and doesn't have the pp to purchase it, he goes to plat farmer 'B' and buys the amount required for his sword.  He then purchases said Sword from player seller 'C'  who now has enough plat in his pocket with witch to buy that brand new mount he has been wanting.

Not being very knowledgeable about all this, it seems as though nothing extra is taken from or added to the system, it is just moving money around, from plat farmer, to plat buyer, to item seller.

So, can someone, (patiently), please point out where my logic is flawed. 

Honestly, I am not trying to bait anyone, or get flamed, I guess I simply don't understand.

Thanks in advance for setting me straight.

I will give you some simplified examples:

Lets say a gold farmer does nothing all day but farm play/gold.  Game designers create games based on what a typical player will be expected to do, so they adjust money drops, quest rewards, repair costs, etc accordingly.

Now said money farmers can (and usually do) run account(s) 24 hours a day 7 days a week.  That makes balancing in game economics a nightmare for developers, because the influx of money is beyond expectations of a normal player.  Especially if you consider the people the do not buy gold and how little they earn in comparison.  More money in the economy deflates the value which devalues the time spent by honest players.

Another quick example is gold dupes (or item dupes).  There is now a finincial reward for exploiting in game activities.  See Everquest2 first year and a half for what happened there.  The economies were out of control due to a small number of gold famers exploiting an item dupe to create unrestricted amounts of platinum in the game and sell it.  It got so out of hand for no other reason than real world money sales. 

There is also the issue of account hacking in games, because once again there is real world money to be made selling the moeny and items other people worked for.

If you have ever entered a login que, you can thank everyone who buys virutal currency that supports gold farmers taking up spots on the server.  Someone is paying for another player to stay logged in farming money for them.  This takes up server slots and in game resources for people that simply want to play a game. 

All of this, because some people think they are entitled to play differently than everyone else to make things "fair" or because they don't have as much time to play.  It really is a twisted sort of logic when compared to the effects it has on the entire server.

Other than instant gratification for not playing the game, I've never seen anyone present one valid reason why this is a benefit to players including those who do not partake in these type of transactions.  It really is just selfish behavior.   

The fear is that be legimizing selling plat, items, and accounts for money there will be a big spike in this activity and that this will disrupt the market.

Today there are farmers that are paid by companies to farm money in games.  These accounts have the plat collected and a player of the game goes to the farmers web site and buys 100plat for $20.  In game the holding accounts send you the 100plat and all is good.  However this activity is against the rules and could result in your account being baned.

So a lot of people won't do this.  Now that this is changing and SoE is providing a web site where players can legally do this then theoretically a lot more people will buy plat.  This in turn floods money into the economy causing prices to rise making things so expensive that normal players can't aford to by anything since the in game curancy has dramatically devalued.

I personally don't believe any of that will happen.  What I think happens is the opposite of what you would expect.  I think the free market devalues the worth of plat and so people farming it becomes hard to sell and not worth the effort which eventually balances the price.  In the end I don't think it will impact the market other then to eliminate botters contacting you and trying to push gold selling.  Based on what I saw when I looked at eq2 the prices actually went down surprisingly kinda implying that there is less plat buying...

I thing the war on drugs is a good example.  The war accomplishes nothing but to increase the traffic and money flowing....

I'm not sure how you can say a company that bans cheaters by the tens of thousands, takes gold selling and bot selling companies to court is somehow in bed with them. 

The company that creates and supports in game mechanics to allow RMT in their games sounds like they are the ones in bed with the gold farmers.  Considering they actually get a percentage of the farmers gold sales now it sounds pretty clear to me who is in bed with who.

 

50,000 accounts is a grain of sand. When you have a game with upwards of 10M active subs 50k accounts wont make a dent in the gold market.

There is more than just a demand for the gold that Drives RMT. There is also a demand for money to pay for the subscriptions by folks who see opportunity. Almost all of the RMT sites have programs allowing people to sell currency  to the establishment in exchange for hard cash. I have several friends who did this once they maxed out their characters. Rather than roll new toons they would just farm gold and sell enough to pay for their account(s).

In EVE they figured out that this was one of the primary drivers of the market and so they tapped into it. You have tools within the game that allow you to make ALOT of money. You can trade your game money for game time codes. No real money has to change hands. The high level player plays the game and is rewarded with free time. The one buying the time does have to pay for the time card so the company gets a cut too.

In bed, not in bed doesnt really matter. The true point is that RMT is so engrained in MMOs now that there is very little use spending time and money to combat it when everyone can benefit.

I agree all the /tells for gold suck but if Blizzard really wanted it gone from the game it would be gone. I stand by my opinion that you will only see more systems in games to allow for it and control it, not eliminate it. There is simply too much money to be had.

Thank you Daffid011 for the explanation.

So:

Since there are more items harvested to sell to vendors by the plat farmers than would normally be the case, then more money actually does enter into the system due to plat farming.    So it  inflates prices putting players that do not have the money that plat buyers have at a disadvantage.  However, doesn't it work to the advantage of player sellers, since they can now sell at higher prices?

Also:

If the increased money in circulation does in fact inflate prices on a server, then does that mean that on Station Exchange servers (sanctioned plat sellers), the drop rates are adjusted down from those on regular servers?  I don't really know the answer to this, but I suspect that they are not.  How does the over abundance of cash on Station servers impact their economies?

Wouldn't plat selling, whether sanctioned or unsanctioned, have the same effect on an in-game economy?

Originally posted by agh50

Thank you Daffid011 for the explanation.

So:

Since there are more items harvested to sell to vendors by the plat farmers than would normally be the case, then more money actually does enter into the system due to plat farming.    So it  inflates prices putting players that do not have the money that plat buyers have at a disadvantage.  However, doesn't it work to the advantage of player sellers, since they can now sell at higher prices?

Also:

If the increased money in circulation does in fact inflate prices on a server, then does that mean that on Station Exchange servers (sanctioned plat sellers), the drop rates are adjusted down from those on regular servers?  I don't really know the answer to this, but I suspect that they are not.  How does the over abundance of cash on Station servers impact their economies?

Wouldn't plat selling, whether sanctioned or unsanctioned, have the same effect on an in-game economy?

This guy/gal asks some really good questions.  I hadn't thought of his/her second point.  What is the answer?