Originally posted by Caleveira

Originally posted by Kyleran

Originally posted by Horusra

Gold sellers destroying the game economy is a red herring.  It is so idiotic as to be stupid.  The own games' designs destroy the environment.  When I get to top level and start an alt I usually have the cash to out spend out buy and out sell any low level character just starting.  Where you as a starting character might only have 10 whatever to spend I will pay 100 to make sure I get it.  Thus people will sell it at 100 to try and get the high level alt player.  Time is what destroys game economies.  Gold selling is what can make a new character in a game competative with long standing games.  The only economies gold sellers can destroy is a game in the first few months of it starting...and I wonder how much gold to price the sellers are actually distributing to people.

Eve Online combats this by spreading out the economy over vast areas and by having the accumulation of isk to be at close to the same levels as beginning players, when compaired to the accumulation as compaired to other games.

So drop the gold sellers ruin the economy bit....it is old.

 

Another excellent observation/analysis regarding the myth of gold selling "destroying" MMORPG's.

For the most part, it isn't true, regardless of the ethical considerations in question.

 

Yes, excellent, the poster twinking his alts and apparently being unable to cope with getting ganked in an MMO make for a deep analysis of ingame economies... are you kidding me? If you guys agree to the premise that over time an MMOs economy will deteriorate how are gold sellers helping the issue? They can only ruin a games economy at launch? LOL yea, thats not a criticaql moment in an MMOs existence...

And to the EVE fanboys, your game is in no way exceptional or a tower of virtue. It promotes RMT on a P2P environment!!!! Thats about the worse model in all of MMOs, it's an abomination... The only reason EVE has survived at all is that is somewhat the only quality alternative in a very specific niche. Good luck loosing a good two thirds of your population when Star Trek Online launches, we will see how you handle the game unbalance when the company tries to squeeze every last dollar out of you... And don't get me the "people can buy their subscriptions with isk" argument, you know youre only fooling yourselves. It is so idiotic as to be stupid.

Yes, because your declaration that a game is an abomination for utilizing rmt is a very deep analytical analysis.  You anti-rmters have little but rhethoric and hyperbole in your arguments.  Don't get me wrong, you do have valid points.  Bots are an issue, spawn camping is an issue, and account hacking is an issue.  But those are symptoms of a different root cause, imo primarily game design.  Those problems can be resolved without needing to ban rmt.  RMT supporters been throwing out logical arguments all throughout the thread but you people condemn for the simple pleasure of condemning without reading or even understanding the arguments for rmt.

Get it through your head people - no mmo has ever been "ruined" by gold sellers, and the vast majority of people are not affected in any way shape or form by rmt.  This is a fact.  Twinking will continue with or without gold sellers (thus you're never going to get leet gear for your low level alts), you will always be poorer than someone else and thus not have enough currency to afford the gear you want, inflation will continue to happen the more a mmo is in production, and if they ever make a pure game you'll find out that it's been you all along who's the failure.  Not the gold sellers you try to blame.

People who are good at mmos are still successful with or without the gold sellers.  It's only the losers who complain about it.

Originally posted by zaxxon23

Originally posted by Caleveira

Originally posted by Kyleran

Originally posted by Horusra

Gold sellers destroying the game economy is a red herring.  It is so idiotic as to be stupid.  The own games' designs destroy the environment.  When I get to top level and start an alt I usually have the cash to out spend out buy and out sell any low level character just starting.  Where you as a starting character might only have 10 whatever to spend I will pay 100 to make sure I get it.  Thus people will sell it at 100 to try and get the high level alt player.  Time is what destroys game economies.  Gold selling is what can make a new character in a game competative with long standing games.  The only economies gold sellers can destroy is a game in the first few months of it starting...and I wonder how much gold to price the sellers are actually distributing to people.

Eve Online combats this by spreading out the economy over vast areas and by having the accumulation of isk to be at close to the same levels as beginning players, when compaired to the accumulation as compaired to other games.

So drop the gold sellers ruin the economy bit....it is old.

 

Another excellent observation/analysis regarding the myth of gold selling "destroying" MMORPG's.

For the most part, it isn't true, regardless of the ethical considerations in question.

 

Yes, excellent, the poster twinking his alts and apparently being unable to cope with getting ganked in an MMO make for a deep analysis of ingame economies... are you kidding me? If you guys agree to the premise that over time an MMOs economy will deteriorate how are gold sellers helping the issue? They can only ruin a games economy at launch? LOL yea, thats not a criticaql moment in an MMOs existence...

And to the EVE fanboys, your game is in no way exceptional or a tower of virtue. It promotes RMT on a P2P environment!!!! Thats about the worse model in all of MMOs, it's an abomination... The only reason EVE has survived at all is that is somewhat the only quality alternative in a very specific niche. Good luck loosing a good two thirds of your population when Star Trek Online launches, we will see how you handle the game unbalance when the company tries to squeeze every last dollar out of you... And don't get me the "people can buy their subscriptions with isk" argument, you know youre only fooling yourselves. It is so idiotic as to be stupid.

 

Yes, because your declaration that a game is an abomination for utilizing rmt is a very deep analytical analysis.  You anti-rmters have nothing but rhethoric and hyperbole in your arguments.  You condemn for the simple pleasure of condemning .

 

Get it through your head - no mmo has ever been "ruined" by gold sellers, and the vast majority of people are not affected in any way shape or form by rmt.  This is a fact.  Twinking will continue with or without gold sellers, you will always be poorer than someone else and thus not have enough currency to afford the gear you want, inflation will continue to happen the more a mmo is in production, and if they ever make a pure game you'll find out that it's been you all along who's the failure.  Not the gold sellers you try to blame.

 

People who are good at mmos are still successful with or without the gold sellers.  It's only the losers who complain about it.

So you think people who care about their comunity (this is not about me, i do fine without cheating, thank you) are loosers? Wheres proof for your fact that no game has been ruined by RMT? And my observation regarding EVE is actually derived from logic, which you would have implied had you read my previous posts. RMTs provide an in-game advantage through out-of-game means. f2p weasels get off the hook by using the rationale that must reward paying customers, but EVE? EVE requires a sub yet still allows RMT , where's the fairness in that? It not only becomes about how deep your pockets go, but you have people actually paying for the privilege of become willing targets for the big spenders...

And RMTs do ruin games, go check out the forums on ROM, PWI or any other "free" game. As to why, i feel no need for reposting what ive already said (go back a page or two) when all ill get in return are dogmatic answers from people who cant be bothered to refute the arguments in the posts they answer to.

Yes i have. Not proud of it but i don't think it's the end of the world.

I used to get my undies in a bunch over the though of people buying in game money but then i realized that what one person does with their time and money is their business, not mine.

In the grand scheme of things though, it is a waste of real life money that could be better spent on beer.

Originally posted by heremypet

Originally posted by zaxxon23

Originally posted by sonicbrew

Anyone that buys this crap should stop gaming period because they honestly forgot the reason they started playing games in the first place!

 

This is another problem with the logic of the anti-rmters.  MMOs are not counterstrike, they're not command and conquer, they're not games in the general sense of the word.  They are persistent online environments, with no winner and no loser, and no beginning or end.

You guys just can't comprehend this, and will never understand why you are so darn ignorant about it.  You think it's "clear" that people cheat when they rmt, but you just can't wrap your silly minds around the bigger picture.

Games have rules.
Breaking the rules is cheating.

What were we arguing about again?

And developers of the games make the rules. So if they put in a cash shop, the RULES of the games SUPPORT RMT. What is the problem? It is not cheating if it is sanctioned.

Originally posted by zaxxon23

Originally posted by Chealar

Hum, maybe a slight distinction should be done between buying gold through legit channels 9genearlly in a f2p), and buying through illegal third-parties (for a p2P)?

If the developers gave from the start the possibility to buy gold from them, then it is not cheating. Anyone who gets in the game knows he can buy gold, knows others can buy gold, knows the economy could become unbalanced.

In a p2p, as explained in an above post, buying gold means trampling EULA, intellectual properties, and games rules.

It's all in the rules set from the start.

 

This solution only works if the developer sets up an ebay-esque system where players sell to other players.  If the dev makes currency available, extremely rapid inflation will result, far more than anyone could dream of into today's mmo market with goldsellers inflating the economy.  If the currency is earned by paying customers, inflation is kept in check and players have motivation to play the game.  I just don't see a game where you can buy all the currency or gear you want from the dev being very successful.  It would likely be laughable.

Exactly what SOE did with Station Exchange.

Originally posted by ChrisMattern 

 I'm sorry, but that's a lie. If you loved MMORPGs you wouldn't pay other people to play them for you. You'd be happy with whatever time you could afford to devote to them.

This isn't a valid argument in my mind. I don't think it's likely for a person to love every aspect of a game. It's like saying if you aren't taking part in everything a game has to offer then you don't really love the game and shouldn't be playing. That's silly. There's always something else to do if you don't like raiding/grouping/crafting or some other aspect, but not grinding money and we all know money makes the world go around. Of course in this thought I did not include the games where you can purchase items/gold from a games shop and I am only referring to those MMOs where you can't.

 (Not directed at ChrisMattern, but to just anyone that decides to read it)

Personally I think the only way to totally stop the distribution of gold/items, against the EULA, would be to not allow player to player trades at all or an auction house. Making the only way to make profit on items is to sell it to an NPC vendor. With that in effect there would be no way around it then would there? For the most part cash shops and item malls do help in canceling out the illegal trading, but it wouldn't totally kill it since third parties could always sell for a slightly lower amount. If money couldn't be traded from person to person and items could then gold buyers could always throw a worthless item up on an auction house and a gold seller could buy it. There is also the option to have a more intense policing of a game, but it definitely wouldn't catch everyone.

Maybe all of those ideas have been brought up already, but like I said before I only skim though most posts.

 Gold farmers hacking and stealing accounts or gold is another myth created by game companies to scare you.  I have never seen or heard of people having such things happen.  The few cases when idiots post "I Got Hacked,"  usually occurs when the morons give their log in and password out to people they shouldn't trust. 

Game companies will complain saying they have to devote too much of their resources to dealing with these people.  Uh.... Blizzard keeps pointing out how many subscribers they have wheres all their money going ?  They don't have enough resources to deal with farmers and it detracts from game development rofl...

PROFIT.  Thats all it is.  They want more of it and they don't want farmers profiting from their system.  Like I said previously if they either were payed a percentage or started their own cash for gold marketplace they wouldn't give a damn.  I'll bet dollars to pesos they probably will start something like that.  If not in WOW, they're so called next gen MMO.

Originally posted by Caleveira

Originally posted by zaxxon23

Originally posted by Caleveira

Originally posted by Kyleran

Originally posted by Horusra

Gold sellers destroying the game economy is a red herring.  It is so idiotic as to be stupid.  The own games' designs destroy the environment.  When I get to top level and start an alt I usually have the cash to out spend out buy and out sell any low level character just starting.  Where you as a starting character might only have 10 whatever to spend I will pay 100 to make sure I get it.  Thus people will sell it at 100 to try and get the high level alt player.  Time is what destroys game economies.  Gold selling is what can make a new character in a game competative with long standing games.  The only economies gold sellers can destroy is a game in the first few months of it starting...and I wonder how much gold to price the sellers are actually distributing to people.

Eve Online combats this by spreading out the economy over vast areas and by having the accumulation of isk to be at close to the same levels as beginning players, when compaired to the accumulation as compaired to other games.

So drop the gold sellers ruin the economy bit....it is old.

 

Another excellent observation/analysis regarding the myth of gold selling "destroying" MMORPG's.

For the most part, it isn't true, regardless of the ethical considerations in question.

 

Yes, excellent, the poster twinking his alts and apparently being unable to cope with getting ganked in an MMO make for a deep analysis of ingame economies... are you kidding me? If you guys agree to the premise that over time an MMOs economy will deteriorate how are gold sellers helping the issue? They can only ruin a games economy at launch? LOL yea, thats not a criticaql moment in an MMOs existence...

And to the EVE fanboys, your game is in no way exceptional or a tower of virtue. It promotes RMT on a P2P environment!!!! Thats about the worse model in all of MMOs, it's an abomination... The only reason EVE has survived at all is that is somewhat the only quality alternative in a very specific niche. Good luck loosing a good two thirds of your population when Star Trek Online launches, we will see how you handle the game unbalance when the company tries to squeeze every last dollar out of you... And don't get me the "people can buy their subscriptions with isk" argument, you know youre only fooling yourselves. It is so idiotic as to be stupid.

 

Yes, because your declaration that a game is an abomination for utilizing rmt is a very deep analytical analysis.  You anti-rmters have nothing but rhethoric and hyperbole in your arguments.  You condemn for the simple pleasure of condemning .

 

Get it through your head - no mmo has ever been "ruined" by gold sellers, and the vast majority of people are not affected in any way shape or form by rmt.  This is a fact.  Twinking will continue with or without gold sellers, you will always be poorer than someone else and thus not have enough currency to afford the gear you want, inflation will continue to happen the more a mmo is in production, and if they ever make a pure game you'll find out that it's been you all along who's the failure.  Not the gold sellers you try to blame.

 

People who are good at mmos are still successful with or without the gold sellers.  It's only the losers who complain about it.

 

So you think people who care about their comunity (this is not about me, i do fine without cheating, thank you) are loosers? Wheres proof for your fact that no game has been ruined by RMT? And my observation regarding EVE is actually derived from logic, which you would have implied had you read my previous posts. RMTs provide an in-game advantage through out-of-game means. f2p weasels get off the hook by using the rationale that must reward paying customers, but EVE? EVE requires a sub yet still allows RMT , where's the fairness in that? It not only becomes about how deep your pockets go, but you have people actually paying for the privilege of become willing targets for the big spenders...

And RMTs do ruin games, go check out the forums on ROM, PWI or any other "free" game. As to why, i feel no need for reposting what ive already said (go back a page or two) when all ill get in return are dogmatic answers from people who cant be bothered to refute the arguments in the posts they answer to.

Define ruined.  I doubt you can find a game that's been closed down due to rampant gold selling.  As for your examples such as ROM and other F2P's, silly rabbit, they aren't supposed to be free, you are expected to spend money to keep them afloat.  You may not like the model, and if you don't buy the item shop loot your game experience might suffer, but its not really ruined except perhaps for you and your goals.

As for your observations on EVE, you are completely off base, I doubt you'll find a single long term EVE player who feels the games RMT has ruined the game.  If anything, most appreciate the fat targets many RMT buyers provide and looting their dead ships can be quite fun and profitable. (esp listening to the qq)

In EVE ISK does not buy you any real advantage, many people can earn far more than they ever need pretty easily.  Heck, I've made over 1/2 billion ISK since Sunday evneing and I've not even been trying.  What do I care if someone goes out and buys a billion or two? Can't fly any more ships at one time than I can, and he can't fit them any better than my skills currently allow.

You are too concerned with fairness, and perceived injustice, that somehow these folks take away from your fun.  It's pretty simple, many players are just plain better at you in PVP or whatever, and you couldn't beat them if all they had was rusty knife and tin cup.  Learn to accept it and move on instead of blaming it on their gear.

I don't buy virtual currency.

My point of view is that MMOs are just games. I already pay
a subscription fee. On top of that I'm not willing to spend more
of my hard earned money. If it takes me longer to achieve certain goals
then so be it. If a goal requires farming, then I'll gladly skip it
(dungeon crawling shouldn't require farming anyways).

About gold selling
I'm not sure if there can be done anything to prevent gold selling.
Where there is demand for a good/service there will always be a supplier
/vendor. In-game inflation will exist even without gold selling, but
gold selling may additionally raise the inflation rate, though.
The real problem is rather that with time the bar (equipment wise) will
gradually be set higher and higher. And it's understandable why some
people resort to gold buying to keep up.
As it seems MMO companys try to control gold selling/buying by various means:
a) binding the more interesting items to characters
b) altering prices of NPC vendors
c) changing drop rates
d) banning players when it's approved that they sold/bought gold.

About Inflation
In MMOs there is one big source for inflation:
+ monsters respawning infinitely and dropping in-game money
The more players play (farm monsters), the bigger the money supply. The
more money one player has, the more likely he is to spend more money on
things he really wants. This effect is enhanced by lots of players acting
in a similar way... ad infinitum...
MMO companys try to control inflation by setting prices (e.g. repair
costs, mounts, etc.) for certain goods that are only available to NPC
vendors.
An alternative to possibly scale down in-game inflation could be by
introducing some real life concepts. Limiting the money supply by having
an NPC run coin mint, which will serve as only source of new in-game
currency. This way in-game inflation could be held in check. But this
concept wouldn't prevent gold selling.

I'm not sure if people would like it if the virtual economy would resemble
the real economy more closely. Or if more elements to increase realism were
introduced. After all it's just a game.
 

 Banning isn't always the best solution either.  I found an article where one MMO stepped up its anti gold farming/selling procedure and ended up banning almost half its player base.  They lost money in the process and the MMO has since failed.  I forget what the actual number was but Blizzard posted they banned a couple hundred thousand accounts not too long ago involved with farming/buying gold.  I'm sure they questioned if it was worth it given the subscriptions they lose in the process.

Originally posted by Sain34

I have never bought or sold any MMO currency. I think people who buy gold are worse than the people who sell it.

I'm with you. Burn the gold buyers!

@ Kyleran; No, this isnt about me getting beat at pvp, cheaters rarely have skill. That you have no arguments does not justify personal attacks. Veterans and high levels quitting a game en masse i would certainly consider a sign of a ruined economy and theres a cycle of this going on in most f2ps. As ive said earlier, while the model of p2ps revolves around retention of players, the model in f2ps relies on turnover. They desperately need to atract as much players as they loose through their policy of exploiting what players they have. f2ps are by far the most expensive MMOs if you play competitively. And as for EVE i wonder how many long time players i would find in the first place...

@ sinach8puff & theAsna; I apreciate that some people take the trouble of trying to find solutions and whatever our sides in the debate thank you for it. I don't think banning trade is an option, aside from the everyday hassles it would bring to common play it would obliterate any semblance of an economy, which i don't think the larger part of the player base would apreciate. As for the npc mint, i think you may actually be on to something. If anything it would provide a chance to deal with inflation and other economic issues in a manner more similar to that of the real world. This allows for irl solutions to be tested and makes our genre more interesting to economists if nothing else. I think it could solve many issues although implementation could be tricky.

@ skarwolf; It is not convenient for most developed countries to solve the issue of so called ilegal migrants. Offering them a path to citizenship or actually managing to stop them from entering their territory would dry up the supply of underpaid labor their economies now depend on. Hence, their solution is to adopt measures they know full well will not solve the issue. The argument that profit justifies immoral choices is not a sound one.

Posted by Caleveira on 10/01/09 at 2:26:08 AM

While i certainly apreciate your effort in taking the time to suggest a middle ground solution, i'm afraid this proposal would not do all. It's not only that this would afect people for whom the economy has become an important and enjoyable experience through acitivities like crafting or merchanting, but that MMOs have evolved to a point where a functional trading system has become a core aspect. Not only would players miss it, but you probably would not be able to get rid of it at all as either a much harder to control bartering system would come into place or players would readily find a substitute for gold. To have areas of the game that players enjoy put into the hands of npcs would certainly be unfair as well. Currency (as tender for transactions) ia as much as necesary evil in virtual worlds as it is on ours.

I appreciate the reply, but I have a few things to say in regard to that. First you say, it would not work "at all." While this approach may seem radical and may turn off potential subscribers, there are hardly any legitimate reasons to think that this approach would have absolutely no appeal. Firstly, I would argue that those who enjoy the aspect of "playing the economy" do so because they enjoy making money. They enjoy the personal satisfaction they receive by amassing massive amounts of gold on their person through constantly undercutting items on the broker. In a situation as I described in my original post, money would not be spent on items which are integral to your character's ability to progress through the game, and making money would not be as desirable. As for crafting, who ever said that there would be no crafting? I simply said that items integral to the growth of your character should not be given a real monetary value. Unfortunately, there would be no way around restricting players from crafting armor, weapons, or anything beneficial to their person, but players may still want an appearance item or a house item simply because the item appeals to them. Players would engage in crafting "for the fun of it," not simply to better their characters. In just about any and every case, the player who spends hours on end raising his crafting skill or level is better off not only financially but also better off in terms of gear progression than the average player who doesn't care for crafting. Crafting, especially in some games, can be an extremely boring and tedious activity. Just about the only justification I've ever heard anyone give for the hours spent harvesting for ingredients is that it's something they can do, which is a bit more relaxing than the average XP group. That's fine, but again, not everyone sees it that way.

Indeed, it would be a stretch, and it may be slightly unfair for those who really get a kick out of owning the economy (I don't have much sympathy for those people) and those who enjoy crafting, but what it really requires more than anything else is the ability to look at the genre outside of its predefined boundaries. Who ever said an MMORPG HAD to have a player based economy? Who ever said an MMORPG HAD to have player crafted gear? Or let me state this another way, if a player buys uber sword of doom from Mr.Moneybags' auction or if a player buys <insert name of mount here> from an NPC in World of Warcraft for a thousand gold, the player most likely has a sense of satisfaction, but I would ask, exactly why that player has a sense of satisfaction. Does his gear make him a better player? Artificially, little jimmy who spends 10 hours a day farming for gold, may do more DPS than a college student with a 4.0 GPA who only gets in about 10 hours a week (and most likely none of that time is spent farming), but other than the gear disparity is the player really any better? No. Little Jimmy simply had more time to play the game, thus more time to farm for gold, and thus he more money to buy better gear.

Crafting and playing the economy or all little side activities developed by the players, but the real meat and potatoes of the MMORPG genre is group dynamics. The real meat and potatoes is running <insert instance here> to get <insert item here>. Players all start off on equal footing by paying bought from merchants which only costs them a decent portion of gold earned on quests and mob drops, but if a player wants better (and in some cases, will be required to have better), he or she will have to earn it. Buying gear or spell upgrades off of an auction house or a broker is in no way earning anything. One having more money to spend than the other is in no way, shape, or form indicative of player skill, and thus has no business being given a monetary value.

Often times, we here tend to harp on modern MMORPGs requiring no real skill on behalf of the player -- it's all based on what gear you have, we often say. As long as gear has stat increases, there's really no way to prevent this problem entirely, but we can at least make you earn the right to wear gear that makes you better than the rest of the population.

Otherwise, there will always be money sinks, player economies driven on essential items, and likewise, gold farmers. As long as items integral to a player's success in playing his character is given a monetary value, there will be players out there who, for a variety of reasons, be it laziness or a lack of any time, will be buying gold off of gold buying sites. You may not like every change I listed, but in order to truly curb the business of gold buying, the entire reason for buying gold must be taken out of the equation.

The problem, imo, stems not so much from game design, as certainly clever mechanisms have been succesfully aplied in MMOs. Decay and gold sinks are two good examples, as upkeep expenses require a player to regularly either spend some time collecting resources (ferming, grinding, etc) or to make use of acumulated wealth. It's the economic distortions introduced by both players (not only buying gold, but playing the market, setting prices, etc.) and GMs/Devs (through event items, rules changes, etc.) that really afect economies. Gold buying is particularly nasty (aside from being a cheat) because it not only affects the economy by itself but its significant enough to further encourage disturbances from other sources.

Gold buying is only truly a detriment when left unchecked. Economies in games such as Lineage II and Final Fantasy XI have long been plagued with inflation from gold buyers, but in games where it's less prevalent such as Everquest II, LoTRO, Vanguard, and on some World of Warcraft servers, the impact (if there is one) is hardly noticeable.

On that same thought, someone mentioned a reason for gold buying as also being due to the game's age. As the game ages, the long-time faithful have larger portions of cash than those who just begin the game. Everquest is a prime example, where even the most average of level appropriate items can sometimes cost up to 10k plat. This isn't a problem as many of the hardcore raiding faithful left in that game are sitting on 10 year old accounts with a 500k platinum sitting in their bank. Between buying items with their massive amounts of plat and selling them back to other players, they never run out of money -- an example of the evils of continually playing the economy.

To further prove my point, I remember when the new Everquest 51/50 server opened up last summer. You had masses of level 51s running around, many with level 85 mains on the other servers, who had absolutely no clue how to raise such large portions of money on their own power. Believe it or not, the server even attracted several new players to the Everquest universe, and the funniest thing was seeing them asking for help in general chat about ways to make money, where the veterans would often recommend half decade old methods that, by and large, don't even work anymore. Many others, realizing what a drag it was to begin that game with absolutely no cash, simply ran back to their level 85 mains and were never heard from again. When I see things like this, I'm sorry if I don't have much for protecting a player's ability to "play the economy."

Cash shops and gold auctions are far from sane choices. As a new poster in this forums i made a thread in which i posed the question of wether any f2p had ever manged a long term healthy economy, overwhelmingly the answer was that no such games exists, which i must say sadly matches my own experience. Unlike p2ps which rely on a base of regular subscribers, the f2p model depends on high turnover, meaning they must continuosly atract at least as many players as they loose. They lack decent retention raters not because of low quality, but because the game being turned into a wallet race becomes too demanding. People playing for free must devote an obscene amount of time to making currency, one that increases as they level. Players buying gold also find that the further they level the more expensive the game becomes. It is not unusual for people to spend thousands of dollars in this games. The more time/money you invest the harder it is to quit, although eventually both groups tire and drop the game feeling scammed and disapointed. No doubt some will defend the micro system, it is unlikely they reached endgame or that they played for long.

Rather off-topic, I think.

Gold buying has the same effect as a cash shop on p2p games, except on a much smaller scale. Still, it has enough of an impact that it elicits some of the reactions you can find on this thread. There may be a solution that is fair to both sides but until it is found im afraid the issue will be how efectively can a company "police" its servers.

...a much, much smaller scale. If gold farmers are allowed to run rampant and largely take over the player economy, the blame should fall on the developer for failing to implement preventive measures to keep the economy relatively intact.

Originally posted by skarwolf

 Banning isn't always the best solution either.  I found an article where one MMO stepped up its anti gold farming/selling procedure and ended up banning almost half its player base.  They lost money in the process and the MMO has since failed.  I forget what the actual number was but Blizzard posted they banned a couple hundred thousand accounts not too long ago involved with farming/buying gold.  I'm sure they questioned if it was worth it given the subscriptions they lose in the process.

Hell, Blizzard doesn't care because they know damn well that all of those banned accounts will just ante up for ANOTHER account to continue their efforts, which really brings them more cash at $50 a pop (Of whatever WoW goes for these days) on top of the $15 a month there after until they are banned again. I doubt Blizzard bans IP's, just the connected account because of the above stated way of gaining more money. This is the way of a greedy company, and I wouldn't doubt they do this.

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Originally posted by Dethevan
And everytime I put something on the auction, I made sure to undercut the lowest bid by atleast 25% to 40% if not more.  I used it to help me bring my characters up to a point to where I could make the money on my own. 
Do I condone gold buyers?  No.  It isn't the gold buyers/sellers that throw Player driven economies into chaos.  It's the fools who are willing to pay the ones who are price gouging.  Those that buy items when someone raise said prices by 300%+  is who is to blame.  If one person can sell said item for that much, then everyone else starts setting their prices around that, if not trying to see if anyone is willing to go higher.  Next thing you know, the market is flooded with overpriced goods.

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I'd just like to point out something. Overly cheap items (dumping) also destroy the economy. There's a reason it's outlawed IRL...

Let's say a player has spend time instead of maney to get an item he can sell pretty high. If the item is suddenly depreciated, it hurts his income. His LEGIT income might I say as he didn't spend money on illegal goldsellers.

Plus, no the market does not get overflooded with overpriced goods. Offer and demands regulates pretty well an in-game economy. If the general price of an item is raised for any length of time, then it means the arket can absorb this new price.

But that is providing that no bot hogs a certain ressource (sending its price through the roof) or that no one buy items out-of-game to then sell them for pennies, completely unbalancing the rarety and value of this item...

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Originally posted by SuperXero89
Crafting and playing the economy or all little side activities developed by the players, but the real meat and potatoes of the MMORPG genre is group dynamics. The real meat and potatoes is running to get .

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Er, sorry for the double-post, but who are you to decide what's the endgame?!

You are obviously referring to some WoW-like game here. But there are other MMOs with other objectives and other types of players enjoying them.

Yes, I'm defending my own fun in a game, As I enjoy crafting, thank you very much. The difference is that I don't just disregard raids as meaningless, just not my cup of tea.

Originally posted by Dethevan

Do I condone gold buyers?  No.  It isn't the gold buyers/sellers that throw Player driven economies into chaos.  It's the fools who are willing to pay the ones who are price gouging.  Those that buy items when someone raise said prices by 300%+  is who is to blame.  If one person can sell said item for that much, then everyone else starts setting their prices around that, if not trying to see if anyone is willing to go higher.  Next thing you know, the market is flooded with overpriced goods.  But, if it can be flooded with overpriced, it can be flooded with underpriced.  Either way, the only way to fix it is for the economy to crash.  (My game economy ideas will be spared for another thread.)

Wrong. 

The price gouging is often done by.... you guessed it.... the RMT.  They identify a high-value, rare item that is in demand and then monopolize it, which can happen in different ways.

1. If the item drops off a mob.... then they simply monopolize that creature, using bots and scripts and exploits to get an advantage, near 100% of the time, over legit players - getting the claim every time, getting the drop every time it does. They then list those items at a high price on the auction house, charging exorbitant prices, leaving many players to feel that the only way they can possibly acquire the item is buy breaking down and buying the gil. That they're constantly advertising their "business" and spinning it as being all fine and dandy is the other side of what they do.

2. If it's an item that they can't monopolize out in the game world, they then run bots that scan and monitor the auction house non-stop, looking for key items. When the items are listed by other players, they immediately buy them out and then relist them at a much higher price, resulting in the same as the example above.

3. If it's a world resource required for crafting, or something like fishing, etc... then they run bots to automate the process of gathering those items, sell the items in mass quantity for lower prices, affecting the market on those items.

Here's just *one* example of proof of how RMT affects an economy...

Final Fantasy XI had a horrible RMT problem for a while. Far too much ill-gotten gil was circulating, dropping the value of it and resulting in far higher costs. Items that would normally go for, say, 200k, were going for 4 mil or higher. Some examples were even more extreme, such as a 2 million gil item going up to 20 million....

One item that saw that kind of increase was the "Emperor Hairpin", a drop from a creature called "Valkurm Emperor". The RMT set up their bots/scripts to scan the spawn area for him... as soon as he'd spawn, they'd warp to him, get claim. If they got the drop, it was passed to another character who put it on the AH for an absurdly high price. 

That's just an example of *one* item that saw that kind of inflation. New players were finding it increasingly difficult to get even basic gear because the price of those items were going up more and more over time. 

It got to the point where players started leaving in disgust at how out of control the economy was.

Then Square Enix stepped in, created their RMT Task Force and came down hard on the RMT. Within a couple months, they'd eliminated a lot of the RMT, had removed 10s of billions of excess (ie. RMT bought) gil from the game and brought it under control. The result? Those items that had gone from 200k up to 4mil came down in price to under 200k. The items that were going for 20 mil were now down to 2-3 mil. A Jujitsu Gi, was 450k prior to the inflation, went up to over 3 million or so at its worst... and can now be bought for about 60k since SE came down on the RMT and eliminated the excess gil.

The result is a game that is now much friendlier to new players, and all players overall. People aren't leaving in disgust over not being able to afford level 10 gear and the game is much better for it.

Again... RMT absolutely *does* affect the economy in a MMO - as long as there are items that players have a high need or demand for, the RMT companies will exploit them any way they can. I've seen the affects of RMT on an economy, and I've seen the improvement in the economy when it's addressed. There's no way anyone can say "RMT doesn't affect the economy".  It absolutely does and to pretend it doesn't is pure willful ignorance.

Point is, people are using those that buy/sell gold as scapegoats for when the economy and such goes bad.  Might it still be their fault? Sometimes, but not all the time.  Some of you say it ruins your gaming experience when someone else buys gold.  Unless said person confesses to buying gold, how do you know they didn't get it the old fashioned way?  

Oh it's quite easy to tell when someone's buying their money.

When someone always wears baseline, unexpensive gear and/or complains about not having a lot of money to buy anything, then shows up a couple days later wearing all the best, most expensive stuff they can have at their level... It's kinda obvious.

When someone never farms, never crafts, never works the auction house, never camps rare spawns, or anything else that could make them money, yet seems to have an endless supply of money to have the best gear at all times... it's kinda obvious.

And again... people buying gold and, thus, supporting RMT *does* affect everyone else, in any combination of the reasons I've listed in a previous post. It's not only the economy that's affected... it's also the tactics the RMT use to do their "business" - all the cheats, and hacks, and exploits, and monopolization of places/items/creatures, etc... Those also have an effect on other players.

RMT companies have started using tactics such as attempting to compromise accounts. When successful, they strip them of all gear and items and sell off what they can for sell-able money, and then use the characters to spam their ads until the character/account is reported and banned. I'd say that's far from a "victimless crime". That's what some RMT companies have resorted to in WoW and FFXI, and I'm sure in other MMOs as well. People who continue to buy their way through the game are supporting those activities by allowing those scumbags to stay in business. So, not only does supporting RMT companies affect others' enjoyment of a game, in some cases, it's resulting in stripped and/or banned accounts. 

A scapegoat, that's what it all boils down to. 

Nope. No scapegoat necessary. It's fact, it happens and it's been demonstrated. Again, ignoring or dismissing the negatives doesn't make them any less so.

 

 

Originally posted by Caleveira

Originally posted by Kyleran

Originally posted by Horusra

Gold sellers destroying the game economy is a red herring.  It is so idiotic as to be stupid.  The own games' designs destroy the environment.  When I get to top level and start an alt I usually have the cash to out spend out buy and out sell any low level character just starting.  Where you as a starting character might only have 10 whatever to spend I will pay 100 to make sure I get it.  Thus people will sell it at 100 to try and get the high level alt player.  Time is what destroys game economies.  Gold selling is what can make a new character in a game competative with long standing games.  The only economies gold sellers can destroy is a game in the first few months of it starting...and I wonder how much gold to price the sellers are actually distributing to people.

Eve Online combats this by spreading out the economy over vast areas and by having the accumulation of isk to be at close to the same levels as beginning players, when compaired to the accumulation as compaired to other games.

So drop the gold sellers ruin the economy bit....it is old.

 

Another excellent observation/analysis regarding the myth of gold selling "destroying" MMORPG's.

For the most part, it isn't true, regardless of the ethical considerations in question.

 

Yes, excellent, the poster twinking his alts and apparently being unable to cope with getting ganked in an MMO make for a deep analysis of ingame economies... are you kidding me? If you guys agree to the premise that over time an MMOs economy will deteriorate how are gold sellers helping the issue? They can only ruin a games economy at launch? LOL yea, thats not a criticaql moment in an MMOs existence...

And to the EVE fanboys, your game is in no way exceptional or a tower of virtue. It promotes RMT on a P2P environment!!!! Thats about the worse model in all of MMOs, it's an abomination... The only reason EVE has survived at all is that is somewhat the only quality alternative in a very specific niche. Good luck loosing a good two thirds of your population when Star Trek Online launches, we will see how you handle the game unbalance when the company tries to squeeze every last dollar out of you... And don't get me the "people can buy their subscriptions with isk" argument, you know youre only fooling yourselves. It is so idiotic as to be stupid.

You need to look at the price that gold in new games goes for.  The price alone stops the average person from buying any gold in a new game.  thus the economies are generally safe because the majority of people are not willing ot pay that price for gold.  As to gold sellers deteriorating the economy more...there is no way that the economy is not just going to deteriorate.  Even without gold sellers there is nothing in games to stop the economy from falling apart when more thank 30% of the population is at max level and starts alts.  From that point on the economy is shit.  Nothing can save it.  The games own design tells new players if you want to enjoy the game you will have to buy gold or have someone give you gold.  Otherwise you will have shit for items.  There is no incentive for new players to WoW, EQ2, LOTR to not buy gold. 

My question to WSIMike so if a bot horde a mob, a resource, or spends its time hawking an auction house for items it is bad...but if a player doing it for themselves it is ok?????

Odviously if this is the problem with the economy it is the games design that is screwed up not the bot.  Because as far as impact on the economy a bot or person do it it is the same.  You should be pissed at the makers of the game not the bots.  They created a game based on a shitty economy.

From WSIMike:

When someone never farms, never crafts, never works the auction house, never camps rare spawns, or anything else that could make them money, yet seems to have an endless supply of money to have the best gear at all times... it's kinda obvious.

LOLOLOLOLOL all the crap you bitched about a bot doing...and now you are complaining that people should be human bots.....lolololololololol.

Originally posted by Chealar

 

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Originally posted by SuperXero89
Crafting and playing the economy or all little side activities developed by the players, but the real meat and potatoes of the MMORPG genre is group dynamics. The real meat and potatoes is running to get .

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Er, sorry for the double-post, but who are you to decide what's the endgame?!

You are obviously referring to some WoW-like game here. But there are other MMOs with other objectives and other types of players enjoying them.

Yes, I'm defending my own fun in a game, As I enjoy crafting, thank you very much. The difference is that I don't just disregard raids as meaningless, just not my cup of tea.

Or Everquest, Everquest Online Adventures, Asheron's Call, Everquest 2, Final Fantasy XI, Lord of the Rings Online, Warhammer Online, Lineage 2, Aion, City of Heroes, Champions Online, or ,without having to go one any further, pretty much any MMORPG on the market today released within the last ten years.  That isn't my definition of what the main focus of the game is.  I would love for you to attempt argue with me that those games aren't based off of grouping with other players in some fashion, be it doing dungeon runs, public quests, PvP, or something as simple as standing in one spot for three hours camping mobs, in order to obtain gear or status to further progress your character.

All these games have crafting in some form, but it is in no real way the main focus of the game, and it is my belief that if largely doing away with many secondary aspects, which, in some ways may have a negative effect on the game's economy, causing economic disparity, would improve what I perceive to be main focus of the game for the vast majority of players as I have already described in detail. 

If you don't like my solution for the problem,  go back and play some other game.  It isn't like I'm trying to rip the crafting aspect right out of the genre.  Any of the games I listed and hundreds more will be around for years to come, and if crafting is what you get the most enjoyment out of, more power to you.  Have fun in any other MMORPG out there.