We like to keep our ear to the blogging (under)ground here at Massively because we often find interesting ideas and perspectives on the MMO industry. For instance, Green Armadillo of Player vs. Developer (PvD) just made a bold yet insightful statement about subscription game item shops being the third Trammel. For those unfamiliar, Trammel changed the way most people played Ultima Online and could be considered a paradigm shift in the industry from "harsh" PvP-enabled MMOs to safer PvE.

It's no secret that the rise of microtransactions and MMO item shops (aka real money trading or RMT) are a big change in direction from traditional subscription based MMOs. However, it now seems we're seeing the line blur between the two. Dungeons & Dragons Online, Champions Online, and most recently World of Warcraft are all subscription-based MMOs with built-in RMT. Are we witnessing the birth of the third Trammel?

As for the second Trammel, PvD calls out WoW's solo quest system. Never in any previous MMO did players enjoy such easy soloability and it seems that every triple-A MMO since WoW has relied heavily upon the solo quest system. We think PvD may be on to something here.
 

Source: www.massively.com/2009/11/08/are-subscription-game-item-shops-the-third-trammel/

Yes, It's quite true I think. But I think this is even worse than first Trammel. But second Trammel is just as bad.

Second Trammel is the worst in my opinion though. Thrid trammel is not so pretty either though. It makes first trammel look like nothing though lol.

It depends on how you look at It though.

It's not all the developers fault.

If the players are putting up with It like blind sheep then who's to really blame?

 It's bad, it's real bad. Content that we were once offered for free, now has a price tag, and no one is ever happy about that. Just like instances it encourages lazy development and broken game worlds. DLC is a plague on video games, not just item shops.

For more than a year I've felt item shops are the direction the industry was heading.

Honestly we've seen glimmerings of this since the introduction of subscription-based gaming.  Remember all those players who bitched about paying monthly for a game?  Yeah, those attitudes and the people holding them never went away -- and now the industry is finally reacting to that.

I don't claim to have seen it coming from that far back though: I was in the forums justifying subscription fees with everyone else (although at the time when it was a big issue, I wasn't staying with subscription-based games.  It wasn't til Planetside, Shattered Galaxy, and WOW that I subscribed more than a month to sub-based games.)

 As long as there are buyers it would succeed, but I still believe there's a fine line that would eventually be drawn between the industry and consumers. I'm just curious if any major successful game would actually dare to cross those thresholds. Personally, I wouldn't think so, subscriptions would probably remain as their staple or perhaps maybe the whole industry would start shifting towards F2P and various Item Shops. I would be interested in trying a game out like that with top notch quality game content/design. 

EDIT: Are the developers really the ones deciding whether or not to implement an item shop? I figure they are just there to program the game design into actual software, never thought they decided the business models that the game would follow. Figured there were other people for that.

What's the standard? What is the one-liner that the industry is going by?

'You pay for our labor and production costs, we give you a product'.

'You pay periodically for our [ongoing] labor and production costs, we give you a [maintained] product'.

'You pay for select labor and production costs, we give you a [trimmed] product'.

Pick one, please. Double-dipping is no fun, and leads to customers feeling gipped. Why am I paying (again) for access to something I want, when I just paid a monthly fee? Even if there's an announcement and companies are up-front about their dealings, it still leaves a gamer demographic feeling like the studio is more interested in their money-making than they are about their product and (hopefully) loyal customers.

There's no denying there is a financial train coming through this MMO station, and changes to infrastructure are in order, but at the end of the day, I'm (and I know many others are) an advocate of 1 standard of payment, not a mix-mash.

Is this game changing or industry changing? It's payment, that much isn't new. How it's being done? It does feel like there is no sense of order to things, that more items, more *games* are increasingly going to this system. It allows a developper to demand a premium for a select product.

It's mass-market economics.

Edit: A re-read indicates my post was slightly off-topic. No matter, I'll leave it but it warrants no response.

Originally posted by pojung

There's no denying there is a financial train coming through this MMO station, and changes to infrastructure are in order, but at the end of the day, I'm (and I know many others are) an advocate of 1 standard of payment, not a mix-mash.

Is this game changing or industry changing? It's payment, that much isn't new. How it's being done? It does feel like there is no sense of order to things, that more items, more *games* are increasingly going to this system. It allows a developper to demand a premium for a select product.

I do agree with a lot of what you're saying here, but at the same time what's really the difference between MMORPGs with mixed payment options and:

• Original Release with Expansions?
• Purchasing a platform (PC, console, iPhone) and then purchasing applications/games/etc?

I agree customers say they like simpler pricing schemes.  But when you look at how they're actually spending their money, they're paying more in the convoluted pricing schemes.  This results in an increasing number of companies chasing after that method of profit.

Seems like the situation may be a result of consumers wanting to feel safe that the companies they buy from aren't lurking around each corner trying to catch them unawares and take their money.  And yet, through the evolutionary nature of capitalism that's the inevitable result -- companies better at separating people from their money succeed while others die out.