Originally posted by colddog04

Apologists unite!

 

You guys could be a little more understanding of others that are having issues getting online.

Sure, I am the first to complain because Blizzard messed up,Blizzard must work night and day to fix all issues and have the servers run in mint condition.

But complaining about how fail it is that the game is online only while you knew this beforehand makes little sense to me, but whatever :p

Personally I think it is a good thing that Diablo 3 went online only.

Clearly, just making it online in itself  won't help much against cheating, as closed battlenet in Diablo 2 showed us.

However it just may be the incentive for Blizzard to step up and invest more time and money in protecting and updating Diablo 3, and add expansions to it.

Blizzard will get more money in 2 ways because of going online only  :

- There won't be any piracy, they have a good product and tons of people are playing it, there will be definatly a bunch of pirates going legit.

- They have the RMAH, where they will get their percentage, of course this only works if people play online.

So when Blizzard gets money from it, they will be more inclined to keep supporting it.

People claiming "It is only because of the RMAH" and "to prevent Piracy", well duh, stating the obvious.

Some other nice features that are linked to online only and/or RMAH :

- Characters are saved on the server.

- Characters won't expire ( like they did in D2 ).

- Gold based Auction House, for this to work, again, people have to play online.

- The RMAH keeps more players legit, who would otherwise may try Illegal and potentially dangerous alternatives.

Of course there are 2 mistakes they made already :

Releasing the Gold AH before the RMAH, I suspect many players will stick to just the Gold AH, there is tons of good deals to be found right there, and because the RMAH is comming in later, people might not make the step towards the RMAH.

And taking 15% for selling and another 15% for cashing in, seems too much for me, this may leave enough room for the illegal sellers to gain market share.

Other than that, I see only positves about this, besides the sunday peaks and the connection issues that come with them, which Blizzard must get under control asap.

I received some more info from EA regarding SWTOR.

http://investor.ea.com/eventdetail.cfm?EventID=110580
 

Quote

"Star Wars, this is an area that I think has got a lot of people anxious. I've heard from investors today saying that we must have 800,000 subscribers. I heard 600,000 yesterday. So what I think a lot of people have misunderstood is we said we had 1.7 million subscribers on the last call, which was about a month ago. What that was about was the fact that only about – just about half that number had triggered through their 30-day point and become active subscribers, our definition of recurring subscribers. We had about half that total still in the 30-day trial period, but they're subscribers because that first month is including with a package good. What I said a month ago was, just over half. I can now confirm for you today that the vast majority of the 1.7 is now triggered through that point and they're recurring subscribers."

So what is the vast majority of 1,7m? I believe it to be higher than 70%, so maybe 80%, 90% tops.

It won't be something like 95% or otherwise EA had no reason to spin it, and could have given out a solid number.

And as always, people start to misquote and spin the information even more :

http://venturebeat.com/2012/03/08/electronic-arts-reveals-new-mass-effect-3-and-star-wars-mmo-numbers/
http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2012-03-08-star-wars-the-old-republic-sitting-at-nearly-1-7-million-paid-subscribers

I admit I was on the lowside with my first estimate, there are probably many players not playing but not unsubscribing either.

Either way, the actual subscription number is on the decline, comming from 1,7m in the beginning of February to around 1,45m to the end of February. Meanwhile Xfire numbers and server load are still slowly declining.

I don't expect a big turnaround with the release of v1.2, but it may be enough to stabilize the subscription base for a while.

Originally posted by Wickedjelly

Originally posted by CyberWiz

I don't know where you pulled that quote from, but following quote comes from the quarterly report :

"Let me offer some metrics on purchase and subscription that will help you understand this business. As John stated, we have sold through two million units of the game since December.
We currently have a little over 1.7 million active subscribers. The rest have either not started playing yet or have opted out."
 

To sum it up, they sold 2 million boxes, they held on to 1,7m after the first resubscription date. However now, after the second resubscription date ( 3 months after release ), they dropped to an estimated 1;2m subs.

 

I got the quote from this very site in an article about the whole affair. Active does not mean subbed beyond the 30-day trial period. How many times does this have to be said?  The quote was in response to that question as in how many are paying customers. The ones that opted out were people that hadn't activated their account at that time for whatever reason. Take your pick: haven't received the game yet, returned their game, simply haven't activated their game, etc. Those are BW's words not mine unless you're going to say that mmorpg.com themselves were lying.

Does this mean that the number could have been very high out of the 1.7 million? Yes. It also could have been just above 50% and still be considered the majority. So...again, it is all subject to interpretation but they did not have 1.7 million paying customers at that point by their own statement. Hence the reason the whole claim by some posters that the game had an 80% retention rate was pure bullshit. We don't know what it was because we don't know the exact number of who were paying customers.

Anyways, a much clearer picture will be made available this next quarter so again this is all moot anyways at this point.

My quote is from Februari 1, and they say "We currently have a little over 1.7 million active subscribers". At that point in time, the first wave of resubscriptions had already occured, so it is pretty safe to assume that the majority of these 1,7 million were actually players that did resubscribe. Obviously part of that are also players that bought the game at a later time, and thus still in their first month. It is also clear that the bulk of boxes were sold in December, so if they still have 1,7m active subscribers, that means something.

If you check serverload and daily xfire players on January you will see that they were indeed damn high, close to WoW proportions. The drop off only started during February, and before the largest chunk of the players had a chance to unsubscribe. After the following unsubscription round around February 20, it became obvious many players already stopped playing and most of these probably unsubbed.

I don't think our opinion differs that much.

I do not say that mmorpg.com is lying, but my quote comes straight from the Quarterly Report comments from EA

I think SWTOR has some good content, but it is just too easy, players either burn thru it, skip content or fight grey mobs and reach the endgame that is pretty light, add to that a thin social fabric, and it is clear that many players don't have reasons to resubscribe after 2 months of playing.

Originally posted by evicton

Looking at their charts I wanna know how wow east takes like a 5 million sub dive between 2009-2010 and Wow global shows no sign, did everyone but 1 million people in asia switch to wow west for a few months?  Tors numbers look about right. How does warhammer have as many subs as everquest, i know its old but its still better then warhammer.

Everquest had slightly more subscribers than Warhammer at the time, but as you can see on the charts, these numbers are getting old, they are from 2010.

Originally posted by evicton

Looking at their charts I wanna know how wow east takes like a 5 million sub dive between 2009-2010 and Wow global shows no sign, did everyone but 1 million people in asia switch to wow west for a few months?  Tors numbers look about right. How does warhammer have as many subs as everquest, i know its old but its still better then warhammer.

I wanted to show both sides of the coin.

Asia lost around 5 million subs for more than a month when the servers where down, when the servers came back up, the Chinese started playing again, close to previous numbers.

However this was more of a technicality ( switch of provider and then the Chinese government blocking the relaunch ), that is why I did not made a global datapoint for it.

The datapoints are correct, I just do not show the global datapoint when WoW China was down, so there is 1 more WoW East datapoint than there are WoW Global datapoints.

I used to have a seperate chart for WoW, but since I don't have any new numbers for Europe or North America, I decided to scrap this chart. There I did show the global datapoint for when the Chinese servers were down.

I hope this clarifies things.

Originally posted by Wickedjelly

Originally posted by Snaylor47

I asked for proof, here is MMODATA.net a third party tracker thingy.

http://mmodata.net/

 

Pretty non-bais.

Oh yeah, you mean another quack that assumes the 1.7 million are actual paying subbed people even though this statement was made:

SWTOR has 1.7 million active subscribers. "The majority of these subscribers are paying customers already." Eric Brown 

Which leaves it up in the air yet magically, somehow, those with the 80% retention rate knew exactly how many were and compared it to the overall sales to get their figure.

Not to mention your own site says it appears to be "going downward". I guess to you that means they dropped to 79% then...eh?

 

I don't know where you pulled that quote from, but following quote comes from the quarterly report :

"Let me offer some metrics on purchase and subscription that will help you understand this business. As John stated, we have sold through two million units of the game since December.
We currently have a little over 1.7 million active subscribers. The rest have either not started playing yet or have opted out."
 

To sum it up, they sold 2 million boxes, they held on to 1,7m after the first resubscription date. However now, after the second resubscription date ( 3 months after release ), they dropped to an estimated 1;2m subs.

I must agree with this.

The only thing that balances it out a bit for me is that me and my RL friend duo everything ( flashpoints, heroics, etc, using our companion ), this way, we still get some challenge.

SWTOR and WoW too for that matter, are just too easy.

You outlevel an area before you have completed all the quests. And if you do more than one flashpoint ( or instance in WoW ) each level it gets even worse, don't even start talking about PvP.

Furthermore, various systems make it even easier :

Quicktravel, good idea for single player geme, but not for an MMORPG., you get everywhere too fast, instead of fighting your way back, you insta pop where you want, and the world gets more empty because everyone zaps from here to there instead of running or even using a speeder.

Death penalty, what death penalty? Even less than in WoW.

So far, I am still having a good time, but for me, comming from mmorpg's that were 10 times harder to get to max level or endgame, SWTOR leveling speed can be halved at least. Same goes for WoW. And if you finish all the quests, and don't feel strong enough, you can still do some instances or PvP to advance a bit more, or go camping like the good old days ( I made more online friends that way ).

For me it would be more enjoyable, and it would make more sense businesswise too I recon.

Originally posted by dubyahite

Originally posted by Cameron27

I've commented on this before, but TOR doesn't feel any more massive than Diablo 2. I mean the group max is 4 players. Its a MORPG not MMOPRG.

The group max is 24 players. Most games group max is usually 40 or less. I wouldn't say 40 is MASSIVE. What is massive about these games is the amount of people playing concurrently in the same game world.

Is there some game out there I don't know of where you can have 2,000 people in a party? LOL

EVE Online fleets are capped at 256, and that is probably the game with the largest sized groups. Of course there are many battles with more than one fleet.

Anyway, is SWTOR an MMORPG? Of course it is! Are there MMORPG's which are more massive? Definatly.

However, so far, I think SWTOR is doing exactly what it is supposed to be doing, and what we expect it to be doing.

It won't be a freeworld sandbox like SWG Pre-CU-NGE or EVE Online, but it sure feels Star Wars, has a good story and a nice look and feel, it may not hold on to me as long as EVE did ( and to some extent still does ), but I am sure I will enjoy myself playing it, and when I finish the content, I can always go back to EVE :p

Finally, since it is a theme park already, LA can't mess up the sandbox :p It is time to let it go ( SWG pre CU-NGE ) and move on.

Dune ( From Frank Herbert ).

Originally posted by darthsihoron

The difference between RMAH and gambling is very simple. While winning money at gambling is based purely on chance ,winning money on RMAH  is also based on some economics and business rulles ( example: a fair price / offer and demand / rarity /etc) Thus if you put a good item for huge price no one will buy it ever. The main problem with RMAH is that it destroys the boundries between gaming and real life... Using real money to buy game upgrades is ruining the fairness of the game because not every user can afford that . So some players will start with an advantage that has nothing to do with their skills,intelligence or time played just with their bank accounts.

I completely agree with that, but too bad this is the way mmorpg's / online RPG's are evolving. The thing is, if you really want to ban all illegal RMT'ing, then you would need for everyone to have electronic ID's and you'd have to use these to be able to play.

This would seriously undermine the freedom we have on the Internet.

It is a balance between freedom and security, China, Australia, Dictatorships, Nanny states, be carefull with what you wish for.

Quote :

"Justice Min Il-young said that trading game money for cash should be punished only in cases in which it is obtained by online gambling games such as poker or other card games."

This clearly sets a precedent don't you think?

Also :

"Meanwhile, a court ruled in September of last year that profits from the trading of "cyber money" should be subject to 10 percent value added tax (VAT)."

So clearly, if they tax it, they are allowing it.

Furthermore in the original law from 2007 on RMT'ing, items and gold are looked upon as equivalent.

Also the law from 2007 tries to combat sweatshops, but that is not what we are talking about here.

So really I think Blizzard has a good case, even in South Korea.

After doing some more research the plot thickens.

So it was not allowed to do RMT in South Korea :

http://terranova.blogs.com/terra_nova/2007/05/s_koreas_bancan.html

A few years later the Supreme Court destroys this law and make RMT legal, except if it is based on gambling :

http://www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/news/nation/2010/01/116_58775.html

http://koreajoongangdaily.joinsmsn.com/news/article/article.aspx?aid=2915126

However if you read this carefully, it may be on the edge. While I personally feel that items in the Diablo series are mostly found by skill, there is of course luck involved, while I personally don't view this as gambling, it may fall under the gambling law.

So the question is how exactly are loot drops done in Lineage? I haven't play Lineage long enough and too long ago to remember.

Here is a link to what this all started, there is a lot of speculation here.

http://www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/news/biz/2011/09/123_95415.html

First of all, I really doubt that unidentified items would be allowed on the RMAH, Blizzard won't be that dumb, if they would allow that then it would be looked at it as gambling in most of the world.

Secondly, while thinking a bit about insertion fees and googling about it, they are allowed for Ebay, so they should be allowed for the RMAH as well. I do personally feel these should be token charges, to avoid spamming the auction house with crap, not a high sum that may discourage a legit seller.

Furthermore, from what I have read, RMT is alowed in South Korea, so I don't see the problem there.

Interesting stuff all of this. Honestly I hope Blizzard will succeed, because I prefer this system over Microtransactions directly from the game companies and illegal RMT from scammers and botters.

Now there is another thing a friend of mine mentioned, what if you buy a dupe with real money and Blizzard zaps it? Or wont they zap dupes? Now then that would be pretty bad as well, so how are they going to fix that?

Originally posted by Ceridith

Originally posted by CyberWiz

Originally posted by Loke666

Still, Blizzard is too greedy in this case, the whole idea is just terrible, particularly for a game like Diablo. I used to think that SOE stations servers were bad but there you can at least choose to play on anothe server.

In a perfect world I would agree with you, but with all the illegal RMT going on, why should Blizzard not get a piece of the pie and nerf some illegal sellers while they are at it.

I hope that by having legal RMT, Blizzard will have the funds ( funds from D3 itself, so that it is profitable ) and the willingness to put in the effort to elliminate the botters and scammers as much as possible. They will have a vested interest in keeping the game healthy, unlike DiabloII where they have nothing to gain.

The thing is that even without the RMAH you do not have the choice to play RMT free because of all the illegal RMT.

The only other way to combat illegal RMT ( besides legal RMT ) is with a subscription fee, where Blizzard would have another way of funding updates, adn the fight against botters, scammers and RMT.

But if you look at WoW, where they really have put some effort in combatting this, they also failed.

So the pragmatic solution is :

- Make RMT legal

- Do it yourself ( Blizzard ) and make profit from it

- Use this profit to combat the rest of the illegal RMT market, together with the scammers and botters.

In a perfect world, illegal narcotics wouldn't be such a problem. But it's going to happen no matter how hard the US government tries, so why shouldn't they get a piece of the narcotics trade and compete against the illegal sellers?

Well you have a good point, and in fact alcohol and tobacco are a good example of regulated legal narcotics in the US. While Marihuana is an example in Holland and Belgium.

Yes, I realize that's a slippery slope argument at it's core, but my point is that one shouldn't forgo one's own principles simply because it's inconvenient and less profitable.

Besides, how exactly does Blizzard legitimizing RMT actually handle any of the ills that come from it? People's accounts will still be hijacked for their items, players will still scam other players, players will still have a monetary incentive to exploit bugs, hack the game, bot, etc. So Blizzard 'getting in on the RMT action' isn't actually combating any of the downsides to RMT, it's just shifting where some of the profit of it goes.

By legalizing RMT there will be at least a percentage of items that are gained by playing the game is it is meant to be played, so the AH will at least contain a good part of legal items, and most likely also a good part of illegal items. Blizzard can then spend the money earned to improve the game and combat the botters and scammers.

And that's why I think it's a purely greed motivated move on Blizzard's part. By making RMT acceptable they're by association also promoting all of the bad behavior associated with RMT. But they don't care, because they're making money off of it.

Well, again, straight microtransactions are worse imho ( and the only alternative for a F2P title, unless you go freemium ), because in that case they are conjuring items out of thin air, and the game no longer has to be played.

To conclude, I would prefer that Diablo3 would be a subscription game, with an even playing field, but nowadays I guess that is out of the question, so I prefer legal RMT between players over Microtransactions within a cash shop.

Originally posted by lizardbones

 

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Originally posted by Loke666

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Originally posted by CyberWiz
 

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If Blizzard implemented a Real Money Player Store(tm) system, instead of an auction, South Korea would still be considering a ban on the game. The issue is not the auction house. The issue is that the game itself is a form of gambling. When you kill a monster (pull a lever) you get a random drop (chance at earning money). You can't earn real world money by gambling in South Korea.

** edit **
@CyberWiz - gambling is an amoral activity; it is neither good nor evil. South Korea is concerned only with the effect on society, and they do not believe it has any positives. So it's illegal.

With D3, it just depends on how they view the game. Is is like mining for gold or gambling with a computer? So far, they have taken the view that video games and mmorpg in particular are like gambling with a computer. It's fine if you never take your virtual earnings and make real world money out of it, but as soon as you make real world money out of it, it's gambling.

 

Okay so South Korea considers any random drops in video games virtual gambling and you are not allowed to cash in in RL cash.

I think they are besides the point tho with their gambling law, because wether it is virtual or real, random or not random, it stays just as addictive. And it is the addiction that is the real problem in South Korea.

Oh well, we will see how this goes.

Originally posted by Loke666

Still, Blizzard is too greedy in this case, the whole idea is just terrible, particularly for a game like Diablo. I used to think that SOE stations servers were bad but there you can at least choose to play on anothe server.

In a perfect world I would agree with you, but with all the illegal RMT going on, why should Blizzard not get a piece of the pie and nerf some illegal sellers while they are at it.

I hope that by having legal RMT, Blizzard will have the funds ( funds from D3 itself, so that it is profitable ) and the willingness to put in the effort to elliminate the botters and scammers as much as possible. They will have a vested interest in keeping the game healthy, unlike DiabloII where they have nothing to gain.

The thing is that even without the RMAH you do not have the choice to play RMT free because of all the illegal RMT.

The only other way to combat illegal RMT ( besides legal RMT ) is with a subscription fee, where Blizzard would have another way of funding updates, adn the fight against botters, scammers and RMT.

But if you look at WoW, where they really have put some effort in combatting this, they also failed.

So the pragmatic solution is :

- Make RMT legal

- Do it yourself ( Blizzard ) and make profit from it

- Use this profit to combat the rest of the illegal RMT market, together with the scammers and botters.

Originally posted by lizardbones

 

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Originally posted by just1opinion

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Originally posted by Cavod
What really gets me about the whole thing is do you actually own the item when you purchase it?
 
Because like all MMOs already do, I'm sure Blizzard will retain the right of ownership to all virtual data.
 
So how can you possible sell something you do not own? 
 
I see lawsuits in the future of the RMAH.

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You have a good point.  That's exactly why gold selling is illegal, so what makes this different?  Either both should be illegal or neither.

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No, they don't have a good point. You're not buying and selling a virtual item; you do not own the virtual item. You're buying and selling a license to use the virtual item within the game.

Also, gold selling isn't illegal. Not even in South Korea. Gold selling violates the terms of service of most games in the United States. It's illegal to gamble online in South Korea, so anything you earn in a game that's like gambling (random drops) cannot be sold for real world currency. If you're not gambling, then it's perfectly legal to buy and sell virtual currency in South Korea.

 

After thinking more about this I can see the argument how D3 with the RMAH may be considered gambling if you really stretch it. You buy the box ( you put money into it ), you play the chance game ( killing monsters and hoping something will drop ) and then you may or may not cash in thru the AH.

However, if you look at it from a moral point of view, I do not consider it gambling.

You do not put money into it directly for getting the items, you "work" for it by slaying monsters. Compare it to the gold rush in the States, you went out looking for gold and you had a chance to find some. After that you could go auction your gold and with some luck you sell it for a good price.

Paying for the box is paying for the gameplay, not the chance of getting items and putting them on the AH, I feel that is stretching it.

So to me, from a moral point of view, it does not feel like gambling in D3 / RMAH.

The only thing I have a moral problem with is the fixed listing price, because there you put in money which you loose if you do not sell, and thus you are in effect gambling.

Originally posted by Requiamer

 

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Originally posted by TGSOL

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Originally posted by lthompson94

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Originally posted by just1opinion

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Originally posted by st4t1ck

Most video game auctions house's have the buy now feature. how can it be named gambling if i click a button pay the cash and obtain an item. 

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I think what you're not "getting" is the correlation to gambling.  It's gambling for the SELLER, not the buyer in this case.  The seller has to pay listing fees and possibly a separate item fee (I don't think we know this yet) and then they have the CHANCE to sell the item.  Essentially....I can see whereas people could look at that as gambling.

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When you take a collectable to an auction, you have to pay to have it entered and auctioned.  It might not sell.  This happens every day in every state in every city and has no correlation to gambling.
When you run an ad to sell something in the newspaper, it might not sell, but you paid for the ad.  This is not gambling.
Sure "you took a gamble," that doesn't make it GAMBLING in a legal sense of the word.
Please people give up, it's not frickin gambling. 

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As someone who doesn't like the RMAH or what it represents, I have to agree. I just don't see how this is gambling. It seems you REALLY have to twist the definition to even come close to making it apply.

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I fail to see how it is not gambling. The simple virtual aspect of the goods make it gambling since you have no real value put into any of the objects. You don't know if tomorrow it will still exist, maintain its value or whatever, a game could close tomorrow and have your money sink in lala land. Their value is highly volatile. And it is a kind of volatile no other product can reach, even stuff that have no reality like a book or an idea isn't as volatile as a virtual item.

I do not agree that the virtual aspect of the goods make it gambling. That would mean that regular microtransactions, bought directly from a game company, would also be gambling.

You invest real money and time in every mmorpg, and you always have the risk that the game gets closed, that does not equal gambling imho.

For me gambling is putting money into something with the possibility of gaining more money based on chance.

Now I also acknowledge that various governments widened their legislation to cover all the angles, and that the RMAH may fall into grey areas.

All tha being said, it would be a real shame if the RMT AH gets canned and a microtransaction scheme would replace it ...