Originally posted by Stradden

 

First: Richard Aihoshi, an industry insider for many years,is writing a weekly column for us.

Wow! I hadn't clicked the articles so I assumed that those were news items about IGN content. Didn't know Aihoshi was writing for MMORPG.com now. Coolness!

Thanks for the input Stradden. I did realise that Richard Aihoshi writes on the RMP topic. I actually quite like his articles and find them informative. But having someone write from the other side would give the site balance, I can’t believe there is no ‘industry insider’ who is not against RMT style MMO’s.

RMT is not already here because MMO’s are asking a fee to transfer servers. That’s above and beyond what anyone can expect to be part of a normal monthly fee. And it’s a darn fine way of stopping server hopping to boot.

As for my dig about the advertising, this is an online community, we generate more conspiracy theories than the Secret World MMO. :D

I thought Magnum2103's list of the good the bad and the ugly in RMP summed it up really well.

Originally posted by Magnum2103

There is good RMT and bad RMT.  Nearly every game (I'm sure there are a few exceptions) uses mostly bad RMT.  Examples of good RMT:

1.  Character customes that don't effect your stats.

2.  Pets that don't have any effect on gameplay.

3.  Minigames that have no effect on gameplay.

4.  Mounts.  They should be the same speed or slightly faster than mounts you can obtain in game with a level requirement if your game has one on mounts.  The mounts obtainable in game should have the same level requirement.

5.  Cosmetic items and potions that alter your appearance.  Haircuts, gender change, new faces, etc.

Also some RMT that might be okay:

1.  Skill resets and similar convenience items.  A free skill reset should be offered at least once though if this is the case.  This isn't necessary to get ahead, but can help players who may have made a mistake.  These items should be tradeable too so players can obtain them without using real life money.

2.  Faster travel.  It really depends how much faster it's going to be.  If players who don't have it are going to have to run around for hours then no.  If it adds a second bind point and travelling from one place to another isn't that long anyway, then it should be fine.

3.  Customes, pets, mounts, and cosmetic items that give minor stat boosts.  Something that really shouldn't be noticable.

Awful RMT (and the most common):

1.  Random boxes that might have a rare item you want but usually give crap.

2.  Any potions that give you major boosts:  Experience, stats, gold, etc.

3.  Powerful gear

4.  Upgrade items so you can get much more powerful gear.  (This is even worse than #3)

5.  Access to gameplay that you can only get through RMT.

6.  Combat pets

7.  Access to characters/classes you normally won't get.  (Especially when these classes are more powerful than the non-RMT ones).

Or anything that gives a huge advantage to a player over another who uses no RMT.

You made a huge post about what is good vs bad RMT.

Please provide a list of games that have "good RMT".

Are any of those games good? If so, please list them.

Originally posted by Lustmord

Originally posted by Magnum2103

There is good RMT and bad RMT.  Nearly every game (I'm sure there are a few exceptions) uses mostly bad RMT.  Examples of good RMT:

1.  Character customes that don't effect your stats.

2.  Pets that don't have any effect on gameplay.

3.  Minigames that have no effect on gameplay.

4.  Mounts.  They should be the same speed or slightly faster than mounts you can obtain in game with a level requirement if your game has one on mounts.  The mounts obtainable in game should have the same level requirement.

5.  Cosmetic items and potions that alter your appearance.  Haircuts, gender change, new faces, etc.

Also some RMT that might be okay:

1.  Skill resets and similar convenience items.  A free skill reset should be offered at least once though if this is the case.  This isn't necessary to get ahead, but can help players who may have made a mistake.  These items should be tradeable too so players can obtain them without using real life money.

2.  Faster travel.  It really depends how much faster it's going to be.  If players who don't have it are going to have to run around for hours then no.  If it adds a second bind point and travelling from one place to another isn't that long anyway, then it should be fine.

3.  Customes, pets, mounts, and cosmetic items that give minor stat boosts.  Something that really shouldn't be noticable.

Awful RMT (and the most common):

1.  Random boxes that might have a rare item you want but usually give crap.

2.  Any potions that give you major boosts:  Experience, stats, gold, etc.

3.  Powerful gear

4.  Upgrade items so you can get much more powerful gear.  (This is even worse than #3)

5.  Access to gameplay that you can only get through RMT.

6.  Combat pets

7.  Access to characters/classes you normally won't get.  (Especially when these classes are more powerful than the non-RMT ones).

Or anything that gives a huge advantage to a player over another who uses no RMT.

 

You made a huge post about what is good vs bad RMT.

Please provide a list of games that have "good RMT".

Are any of those games good? If so, please list them.

I think you took his post out of context. It wasn't that those particular RMTs exist, just what wouldn't be outlandish. I've yet to play a good or even decent RMT game, but I accept that the genre might be headed there at least in part. As such, we should start voicing opinions now, about what is and isn't feasible to MMO goers.

Maybe we could get Richard to write about a different topic from time to time.  It might make his bias ( laugh,joke,prod) seem less visable .

Reguardless it makes for decent reading keep up the reporting!

Originally posted by madeux

I don't see them pushing it so much, more like accepting the inevitable.  It's already happening, and it's going to continue to happen.  Will all games end up this way?  To one extent or another, yes.  Even WoW tries to get extra money by charging you to change servers, or give your character a makeover. 

It could be inevitable but I will never pay a dime for pixels and I don't think that I'm the only man on the planet that feels this way.

MMORPG.com gets money from F2P advertisers.

RMT is a mass scam against consumers, its breaks every principle and law about consumerist rights.

Its just that the main target audience doesnt have what it takes to push the boundaries of evolution and make the developers respect them. The players, even those who arent kids anymore, either doesnt have the knowledge, the balls or doesnt care about the stupid situation in wich we complain in forum everyday. Its time to go to court, hit the jurists, right books and make jurisprudence about this ridiculous big money scam that is happening right in front our eyes for nearly a decade now.

It should be blatantly forbidden, but who is going to explain the legislators and jurists about what RMT trully stands for, about games without support, endless beta tests "Oh, you cant hold us responsible, its just a testing period, but we do sell stuff to you anyway". What about that bullsh** "you have no rights over whatever time and effort you spent on your character, everything belongs to us" bullcrap and "we can end the service at any time and you cant do nothing about it, no refunds, because you knew it from the beggining by signing our ridiculous forced agreements".

Our "world" has no tailor made laws to protect us from them. You only hear about law when two companies fight each other. This has to evolve, it will evolve.

It happened in other areas of life, like labor and consumerist wright all over the world during the last century. And is discussions like these, on the main foruns that starts injecting revolt (or righteousness if you prefer) in to the minds of the many who read.

Even though the majority (70%+) of players dislike (wich doesnt matter, since its blatantly against principles like good will, confidence, security, risk of the company, and many others) RMT as it is popular stablished (pay to win) MMORPG.com doesnt feel like the pinacle of ethics and morals or their role in changing things, even though if they really wanted they as a 5th power (big internet communities) could push it through, but they dont give a **** about it, they just want more advertisers. Thats the truth.

The same thing is games that arent Massive,

1. in number of concurrent players in the same area

2. in the scale of time and effort needed to evolve a character in a persistant world

but still use the MMO stamp, because "its more popular".

"Why would someone give a crap about our new MOG, or our MOFPS, or our MORPG?"

"Lets enjoy the MMO stamp for as long as we can untill the community evolves and decides to filter our bullsh** games from their mainstream advertiser websites"

Honestly I feel lots has changed here at mmorpg.com not all for the better.

I see a LOT of ads in general on this site, F2P or not.  I also see certain recent examples of overmoderation.  I appreciate that it costs money to host this site but I would place a wager that the ad revenue is excellent.

This used to be a place where the community could come and talk about games ..... the good and the bad.  Now I see it as a advertising paradise with seemingly stricter controls on what can be talked about and how.   I don't want to bring up specifics but I no longer consider mmorpg.com to be the community source it once was: a neutral and unbiased medium for gamers to discuss games.

I site the plethora of ads, recent examples of over moderation and the viral posters as examples of this.

Lum the mad's avatar is rolling around in his virtual grave.

Sorry to sound sp negative and critical but thats my 2c.

First off, I am sick and tired of people equating in-game item and bonus sales with fees charged for server maintenance transactions. The two *are not* the same in any way shape or form and the willingness of companies to allow server relocations does not correlate to RMT being the wave of the future.

Secondly, Sanya's accurate descriptions of many of the social aspects of the MMO player base aren't related to RMT in any way at all. You also don't have to like them, but as a long time MMO player I completely agree with her. There *are* many aspects of the group social dynamics of MMO players that make them problematic for game companies. The same is true of nearly any customer demographic and the point is not so much to "blame" anyone as understand WTF happens and why. Many MMO companies could do better if they fired a coder or two and hired a good social engineer/sociologist early in development.

Finally, as others have mentioned - the perception of bias comes largely from Richard being a fairly prolific writer and occasional others writing pro-RMT articles, completely without an explicit counter-point.  There would be a greater appearance of "fairness" if we saw the occasional article on how other revenue models are doing and so on. Personally, I have seen a growth in the acceptance of "long term" subscription models - with more people paying for 3,6,12 month subs at a time and many even buying lifetime subscriptions when offered.

Originally posted by Rekindle

Honestly I feel lots has changed here at mmorpg.com not all for the better.

I see a LOT of ads in general on this site, F2P or not.  I also see certain recent examples of overmoderation.  I appreciate that it costs money to host this site but I would place a wager that the ad revenue is excellent.

This used to be a place where the community could come and talk about games ..... the good and the bad.  Now I see it as a advertising paradise with seemingly stricter controls on what can be talked about and how.   I don't want to bring up specifics but I no longer consider mmorpg.com to be the community source it once was: a neutral and unbiased medium for gamers to discuss games.

I site the plethora of ads, recent examples of over moderation and the viral posters as examples of this.

Lum the mad's avatar is rolling around in his virtual grave.

Sorry to sound sp negative and critical but thats my 2c.

How does having ads change your perception of this community? The bottom line is that the site has to make money in order to pay its employees. How would you suggest accomplishing that? subscriptions?

As to moderation: Well, on a daily basis I hear from people like you who complain that the site is too heavily moderated and I also hear from people who tell me that we don't moderate nearly enough. I'd say we're doing just fine.

When a site gets larger, as has been the case at MMORPG.com, more rules need to be put in place. it isn't as though our RoC are extensive. basically, don't be a douche and you'll be fine.

Anyway, feel how you want to feel, this is just MY 2 cents.

Originally posted by Jefferson81

Originally posted by madeux

I don't see them pushing it so much, more like accepting the inevitable.  It's already happening, and it's going to continue to happen.  Will all games end up this way?  To one extent or another, yes.  Even WoW tries to get extra money by charging you to change servers, or give your character a makeover. 

 

It could be inevitable but I will never pay a dime for pixels and I don't think that I'm the only man on the planet that feels this way.

 

You are not. I will not play an RMT game, and if it suddenly takes over the MMO genre, it will be a genre without me.

Originally posted by Stradden

Originally posted by Rekindle

Honestly I feel lots has changed here at mmorpg.com not all for the better.

I see a LOT of ads in general on this site, F2P or not.  I also see certain recent examples of overmoderation.  I appreciate that it costs money to host this site but I would place a wager that the ad revenue is excellent.

This used to be a place where the community could come and talk about games ..... the good and the bad.  Now I see it as a advertising paradise with seemingly stricter controls on what can be talked about and how.   I don't want to bring up specifics but I no longer consider mmorpg.com to be the community source it once was: a neutral and unbiased medium for gamers to discuss games.

I site the plethora of ads, recent examples of over moderation and the viral posters as examples of this.

Lum the mad's avatar is rolling around in his virtual grave.

Sorry to sound sp negative and critical but thats my 2c.

How does having ads change your perception of this community? The bottom line is that the site has to make money in order to pay its employees. How would you suggest accomplishing that? subscriptions?

As to moderation: Well, on a daily basis I hear from people like you who complain that the site is too heavily moderated and I also hear from people who tell me that we don't moderate nearly enough. I'd say we're doing just fine.

When a site gets larger, as has been the case at MMORPG.com, more rules need to be put in place. it isn't as though our RoC are extensive. basically, don't be a douche and you'll be fine.

Anyway, feel how you want to feel, this is just MY 2 cents.

Its your sandbox, not mine.  "People like me" eh? I dont want to know the typecasting you've just gone through in your mind or where you've placed me.  My perception of this site changed when I was wrongfully accused. It was clear that a post of mine (for which I was reprimanded) did not actaully fit into the category for which I was accused.  When contacted your moderation then changed the classification of the reprimand instead of outright removing it......"you" looked for a reason after the initial reprimand.  That is not neutrality - that is an attempt at censorship.

The message you are sending me is this:

When a site gets larger you are not allowed to dispute an inappropriate infraction against you because if you do we will just find something else you said to place an infraction on you.  So people like me, grown adults who thought this was a place to voice an opinion, tend to wonder what the real agenda is. 

I'm what you would likely classify as a troublemaker because I have independant thought and feel that even a recreational gaming community deserves a place, no matter how small, to talk about the good and the bad.  Your site muzzled me for no valid reason.

Do I sound paranoid? Do I need a tinfoil hat? Well if this issue was important enough for me to persue perhaps.  But its your sandbox and people like me have to accept that.  There are enough places in society where rights are being stripped away that one could better spend  time.

People like me understand you need ad revenue to survive but I question your neutrality based on personal experience.  Obviously the OP has similar concerns.

People, its not about voting silently with our money anymore.

We are losing it. Its not working. The masses of people searching for the savior game increases everyday and the solution is not coming.

Its about to raise our voices and say "Its over, we will not tolerate it anymore".

Its about educating (and even influencing) the masses of fellow players just so that the homogeneous mass of mmorpg players evolve and deeply understand that they have to change the market, they have to "fight for their rights". Not as dramatically as it sound, but its a slow cultural change that we call evolution, we lower our tolerance level forcing them (devs/companies/publishers) to addapt and make better products every day, but its time to do it regarding RMT as well.

No more bullshit PAY TO WIN mechanics, specially changes after patches when they completelly change the game. Our expectancies, our sense of security... they change it at their will and people accept that, there is no law to prevent them from doing it either.

The least we could do is change our game filters to something "in your face" like segregating F2P PAY FOR FUN games from F2P PAY TO WIN games or something to that effect.

We have to make this prejudice we have from F2P games that are pay to win from something more SOLID. Something that cause effect and actually SENDS A MESSAGE TO DEVELOPERS OUT THERE.

"Oh look, they catalogged our game as F2P PAY TO WIN, now we are stained with a really bad prejudice mark on our game and a lot of people wont even try our game because of that and we wont even be able to cheat people in believing in our game its fair and balanced so regardless of paying or not everyone has a chance of being the best"

That will cause damage and that can be done by the communities, like mmorpg.com.

Originally posted by Rekindle

Originally posted by Stradden

Originally posted by Rekindle

 I also see certain recent examples of overmoderation.  I appreciate that it costs money to host this site but I would place a wager that the ad revenue is excellent.

This used to be a place where the community could come and talk about games ..... the good and the bad.  Now I see it as a advertising paradise with seemingly stricter controls on what can be talked about and how.   I don't want to bring up specifics but I no longer consider mmorpg.com to be the community source it once was: a neutral and unbiased medium for gamers to discuss games.

As to moderation: Well, on a daily basis I hear from people like you who complain that the site is too heavily moderated and I also hear from people who tell me that we don't moderate nearly enough. I'd say we're doing just fine.

 "People like me" eh? I dont want to know the typecasting you've just gone through in your mind or where you've placed me. 

You're either baiting Jon (and doing a poor job of it) or just not even paying attention to what you're slapping out on your own keyboard.

rmt or f2p game are needed ,that being said its a niche.not everybody will play those game in fact if for any reason the industry would only support f2p or rmt system ,im sorry to say in the long run all the gaming industry of mmo would suffer greatly

why ?console!yes console like sony  etc.are doing very good the cost is often 1 time transaction or monthly but it never pass 20 dollars a month

people will say why 20 $ thats what people are willing to give to a great game a month (I REPEAT A GREAT GAME)

in 90% of situation f2p system is too gready check any f2  game when you adjust your computer graphic it looks good  will have very good stuff in september, what kills these f2p or rmt game is the the upgrade system

you buy say 3000 diamond ,so in practice you should be good for 5 month

lol that will never happens why?

just a permanent mount witch is a needed in most game and the furniture in house you need some too to get descent xp and tp

ok you say now im on as roll,for a while then at 50 you need to tier your gear

and thats where it hurts ,at 50 the only item you get garantied result are ruby where you get them

if you buy item in store that give ruby as bonus then your good ,lol you have to spend a lot to get small return

what the problem is with f2p is they try too mutch to find a scheme that will put their game popular for the next 4 years like wow

in f2p its not gona happen i think f2p is just too expensive either in real money ,but then they say oh its a free game (developer)

ok if its free then its gona be very costly in time say wow you did in 3 month to be succes (average joe)

then in f2p it will take you from 6 month to a year to get same result

but wait your not gona play f2p for a year theres this great x,y,z game coming up in september

so any f2p will be a filler till the x,y,z game come

then you ll see f2p industry whine oh dam we only sold mount

yep and its your own fault 

if instead f2p aimed for an average of 20 $ spent by player lol wow would have been dead a long time ago

but when you think you got to pay between 11 and 22 $ for a mounth then you say ok if i still play ill buy other stuff next month

your 20$ is spent,then nex months come.

want a special item its 50 $ oups got to wait 2 more month to save the budget on that to get the item

oups you go to your fav f2p game oups 2 month was too long for them they just closed

if they had been less gready people would have bought more

if you sell anything in a game less the 5$ ,if the item is good like a mount np they ll buy it but if you sell a jewel to enhence your armor any jewel more then 1 $ in real money people will go to dollars stattion and buy junk food instead

because almost everything in those store is avail for 1$ why would the gamer buy a 5 $ item in f2p game when he can have 5 real world item for same price.

dont believe me think about it everybody budget nowadays!

and if the item in the item store of f2p is less expensive then the 1 $ store most will buy the item in the f2p

silly ?yes !but its like that your item will be compared to the item they sell at 1$ store .if the total cost of simple item is more then say 95 cent i ll go buy a key chain i dont need at 1$ store instead of feling like f2p  just stole my money legally

so my advice ,xp pot etc will never sell at 5 $+each you ll sell to your friends thats about it

check wow on average people shell out 16$ a month to play that

guild wars is different you get pvp pack for sale witch i recommend to any serious pvp build maker 

guild wars system works yets its optional but its a 1 time buy so in the end you get good value

lol in f2p say you upgrade the house to max it will cost you 300 diamond a day to keep that its around 16 $ a daY

lol after that they wonder why they dont sell

the only time f2p sell is when great item are on special ,when they got a spacial on ingame currency then in that week you ll see a lot of sell but thats it .i can tell you aion will be a huge succes in usa as will be guild wars 2.

why?gamer will know the total cost of the game experience up front

f2p will be good for casuel gamer whit not spare time for anything but work

but you ll never get the insane experience you ll get in other mmo ,you cant f2p,or rmt is too expensive

Let me see if I understood you drbaltazar.

You are saying that if what is offered in the "shop" could be bought with $10-20 max and no other incentive to spend more than that, then people would actually play the free to play game and some would actually spend $10-20 on it?

And since F2P companies try to take the most out of peoples money then those would gladly spend $10-20 wont anymore, and many people who would actually play the game wont because it will be too unfair for them, since those who will spend more than $20 will "break the game"?

Also, did you said that if F2P planned their cash shop so that people would spend only $10-20 then they would break WOW?

Is that what you tried to say, or something like it?

Drbaltazar left the building.