Perceptions shape the world in which we live and are ofttimes unalterable, or so we believe. However, in today's Devil's Advocate, we take a look at how new information can sometimes change how we perceive things and help us change our way of seeing them. Read on and then leave us your thoughts in the comments.

Today's Devil's Advocate article is on perceptions, and how opening yourself up to the possibility of a different way of looking at things can alter your attitude towards even those things we as gamers find reprehensible, such as the trade of real-world currency for virtual goods and the process we think of as gold farming.

Read more of Victor Barreiro Jr.'s The Devil's Advocate: Different Perceptions of RMT.

RMT and companies like OffGamers are made possible by the ridiculous design decisions made by MMO developers which are meant to boost their own profits.

In what industry focused on serving its customers could you ignore billions of dollars spend by customers in using your product the way they wish? 

Many, Many people are tired of the grindy mechanics of MMOs.  They enjoy other aspects of the games , though, and so they continue playing. To get over the grind, they use RMT systems. And Diablo 3 is an excellent example of this going into effect in an upcoming title! 

To play as a Mage in WOW they may purchase a level 85 account and then go on to Raid as a Mage, rather than levelling a character from 1 to 85. They don't care abotu leveling, they want to join their other level 85 friends raiding, because that's what they like to do. However, Blizzard depends on subscription fees through the long levelling process from 1 to 85 to make its profit, regardless of what customers may want. 

Now see a game like Guild Wars which relies on a single transaction with customers like Skyrim to play. If a customer wants to get ALL the powers without having to level up slowly, they can buy all the PVP packs in the GW store. Then they can continue playing their adventures and battles as they wish.

Restricting customers and funneling them down a path dictated by developer profit is what creates the market for RMT. 

Developers could stop RMT in future and in many cases current titles simply by changing the underlying systems of progression in their games and embracing RMT which is inevitable, instead of spending millions to try to prevent it.

In a very real way it is simply equalising the needs of the customer against the dictates of the developers in a rather beautiful demonstration of free market principles. 

I do NOT make distincton between "good" and "bad" RMT.

I don't accept RMT at all and all it's forms are bad.

People differs so differs their perception and opinion on all things , RMT included.

Of course 'industry' or certain companies want to change overall perception of it, cause they make money or want to make money out of RMT.

I just hope that majority of players won't be streamlined into one way of thinking and there will be peopele who accept RMT and people who don't accept it at ALL and so diffrent products and diffrent business models will be targetted to those diffrent audiences.

I will rather stop playing mmorpg's at all than play with RMT's ( I tried for long months and learned I really loathe and don't accept it and I've tried diffrent approaches with 'praised' by some Lotro approach included).

I cant really comment if the RMT companies are out on any sort of evil crusade to mine the mmorpg economy, but they sure are out for money. 

Now, i know we live in a world where money sets the rules and pace of almost every living person on this earth (except the buda monks...they go well with only rice and fish) and everyone tries to get some of it. There is real money to be made on trading game assets for real money. As i dont even want to start a wall of text about the evil money brings to this world, i will focus on games.

So, for me, every asset on a mmorpg shoul not be allowed to exist outside the game world, and the structure itself. Allowing for 3rd party intrusions, whatever the form they present itself, is a severe breaking of, not only game dynamics, but also of player morality and transparency. 

If what we are talking about revolves only around the game asset trade for real money, im totally against it. Game assets should only be allowed to be traded between players.

If you know EVE, then you know that all kind of assets (game time, ships, even characters) can be traded by money/play time, but only within CCP own designed system for that purpose and always between players...no 3rd party involved.

Its not a perfect system, but it is a damn good one, and the best i have seen so far.  

I HATE RMT, not because of anything AT ALL  to do with racism.

I HATE RMT, because it ruins the "level playing field" that a simple FLAT RATE subscription fee provides. Let's face it, $15 per month is NOTHING WHATSOEVER. Do you buy pizza more than once a month? BAM, stop buying pizza at LEAST once more per month & you have EASILY provided yourself with enough money to play an MMO that YOU enjoy. $15 for the UNLIMITED playtime for 30days that you get is STAGGERINGLY unappreciated.

It is unacceptable under ANY medium that RMT should exist in an MMO. It leads to "Pocket Warriors" like we've seen in World of Tanks. World of Tanks is VERY famous for their developers in beta claiming that "Pay to Win" mechanics would NEVER be installed in their product. Yet, their MatchMaker for their PvP matches are skewed to the point that ONLY people who have spent REAL MONEY on gold ammo, gold tanks, or on "Premium" ever enjoy the game. Not to mention the ability to BUY with RL money tanks that are almost equal to their non-payed for counterparts.

RMT, in the "illegal gold farming" sector, ruins in-game Economies by allowing players to simply throw RL money around to get in-game currency in order to buy whatever they please. This ends up skyrocketing the market to unheard of levels to the point that NORMAL players cannot even compete or hope to even get anything. This was the case in EQ2 a couple years ago when RMT gold selling was THROUGH THE ROOF causing prices to go from 5gold to 10plat for a high lvl crafted item.

RMT, in ANY product outside of Korea or China, will ALWAYS have a massive negative stigma to it. It's dirty, and will not become the mainstay of the Western Market. It's simply too "unfair" for the views of the west, and MANY european countries I might add.

 Heh , a nice well worded post about RMT's , but in the end it doesn't matter how much you wax and polish the issue , RMT is and always will be garbage.  Nothing more needs to be said about this issue.

Tell me something, why should I put any trust in anything the owner of a site that sells in game gold and items says about RMT? I'm sorry, but this article is a joke. 

I hate rmt because its cheating and criminal. Period. 

So Offgamers doesn't actually farm and sell virtual goods themselves, they just broker the illegal activities.

He has no problem with that because he and his company make a lot of money from that.  He doesn't care that the "companies" that do farm that gold pay for those accounts with stolen credit cards, hacked accounts, or other nefarious means.  He doesn't care that the owners and developers of the IP don't want that in their service, yet feels justified in claiming that the players own their virtual goods when the terms of service in the games themselves explicitly state that is not the case.

Justify it any way that makes you feel okay indulging and supporting illegal activities that are a detriment to game play and sometimes a real individuals personal identity and financial information.

I'm looking forward to next weeks Devil's Advocate where we justify players using exploits, third party programs, and hacking the client.  You can even end with a footnote how hacking the account database to gather personal info makes sense too.  The author and the site have crossed a line with this article.

I'm not sure I understood the article fully but I reacted in this way: It's like you go to watch a movie, pay for overpriced tickets and snacks, then professional movie critics come in with lights, set up cameras and chairs, and begin to record a critic show right there in the movie theatre while the movie is playing. You'd get up and say "Sir, we are trying to watch the movie we paid for. Please leave and do your show somewhere else." in which they respond with

"Uh, no, I do this for a living to make money and I give it all to charity. What do YOU do, bub? You just come here to spend your money for pleasure. Why don't YOU get out." So I don't think the charity and the "I'm making a living" excuse works at all.

Not all gold farmers use bots and not all of them farm out in the open... but they certainly have been caught doing so at night-owl hours in unpopular locations. Not sure what else to say.

It's great that they are doing charity work and all that. It's also cool that they don't condone hacks, monopolizing or other forms of cheating. I wonder how they are able to enforce this but that's neat.

All that said, none of that changes the fact that RMT is cheating, and MMORPGs are games and in games cheating should not be tolerated. No amount of charity work or code of ethics changes the fact that they are making a profit off of cheating and cheaters to buy their products.

Now if developers want to change their game to support this form of cheating then it's no longer cheating if it's how the game is made. I probably won't buy that game but they can do what they want.

I want to clarify that I don't think RMT is some evil industry like drug trafficking, or actually theivery, and I don't have any sort of racial profile that goes along with it, I just really don't like cheaters.

Isn't that touching?  They take allegations of illegal activity "seriously".  When a politician says that, he means something to the effect of, "I want you to think I'm against it, too, but I'm not going to do anything about it."

Let's assume doing charitable work and good deeds makes an underhanded business somehow laudable. 

Nowhere in the article did I read that the office does the regularly or even semi regularly.  Instead, they did it once and the "author" somehow bought their load of BS.  The "author" appears to be much more of the flunky than an impartial journalist.

Is this article a joke?

Nobody cares about any of that... only that gold farmers PLAY and not use BOTS. The ethics and problem is not that people are gold farming, it is that gold farmers cheat!

If no goldfarmer cheated, then who would have a problem with them... where would the discorse & hatred come from..? Goldfarmers ruin the gameplay of those  around them, that is why they are shunned and hated. Not because players (as individuluas) need to learn to be "accpeting of others".

The whole premis of this article is so totally off point, that we should look inward and be more accepting of other people's financial situations.. so they should be allowed to ruin people's gameplay... because they are working?

Gold farmers are not players, they are workers.

Originally posted by Phelcher

Is this article a joke?

Nobody cares about any of that... only that gold farmers PLAY and not use BOTS. The ethics and problem is not that people are gold farming, it is that gold farmers cheat!

If no goldfarmer cheated, then who would have a problem with them... where would the discorse & hatred come from..? Goldfarmers ruin the gameplay of those  around them, that is why they are shunned and hated. Not because players (as individuluas) need to learn to be "accpeting of others".

The whole premis of this article is so totally off point, that we should look inward and be more accepting of other people's financial situations.. so they should be allowed to ruin people's gameplay... because they are working?

Gold farmers are not players, they are workers.

They not only cheat but also spamm tells (not to mention posts on this forum).

I can't say I care if someone hire in a friend or something to farm crap for him but first they cheat which make the game less fun for me and then they send me annoying PMs advertising their gold. That sucks.

But the RMT thing is BS. If the devs really wanted to get rid of the gold farmers they just could make the game less grindy, what they really want is to earn more money but instead of saying as it is and raising the monthly fees they charge players for items services and whatever they can get away with and then blame the goldfarmers.

Playing MMOs should be fun, if so many people can think to buy gold or item to avoid earning them by themselves it tells us that the game in itself is to blame, not some dude in the poorest part of China that needs money for food. Make the game more fun and 95% of the gold farmers will go out of business.

Yes..^

But the article was written from the point of view that we must overcome the fact that gold farmers are a disease and just learn to accept them, because it is the only way they can make money.

I don't accept that.. so nothing beyond that point matters.

This is the most hilarious part:

"Today's Devil's Advocate article is on perceptions, and how opening yourself up to the possibility of a different way of looking at things can alter your attitude towards even those things we as gamers find reprehensible, such as the trade of real-world currency for virtual goods and the process we think of as gold farming."  

I think i can also feel some compassion actually for them, its not like everyone see roses all around them.

And damn those guys are really super polite, i didn't happen to know a lot of them really, but it was always amazing how polite they were. In fact everytime i met a super polite guy during my mmo adventure, i automatically knew he was a gold farmer, and it was one.

Mind you i really don't like RMT.

Honestly i can't wait to see what will happen with D3. I trashed this game hard, i don't think i'll pay for it, i'll rather wait for some private server. I will maybe play it if it have some kind of revolutionary gameplay i have to check, but it doesn't have any i think. But i'm still very interested to see how RMT and Blizz will like "make babies" , will they fight all day long over the salt in the food, or will it be a perfect match. I'm really curious tbh.

RMT from people other then the game company that designed the game should be illegal and punishable by law, RMT for anything other then cosmetics and convenience items in store should be banned from the genre altogether and RMT by the company who made the game should never ever be for gear, enchants, gems, scrolls, etc normally used for character enhancement. Finally, RMT for items in an Auction House is just plain greedy and should never be used for any excuse. There is no excuse it is simply greedy and we've all seen what happens when people become too greedy, around the end of 2007 and the beginning of 2008 which has essentially affected the whole planet's economy.

Just because people who worked/owned an orphanage decided to use it doesn't make it anymore correct. Whole accounts have been stolen items sold all for the sake of money. RMT is no different then the evil of having to use money for the sake of survival such as food clothing housing, it;s simply another form of the evil that's spread all over the same evil that forced each of us to be in debt before our nine months incubation period.

Even terrorist organizations typically have charity wings.  That's not a valid justification for the rest of their activities.