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Role Playing (Games)

Selling Virtual Gold for Fun and Profit 74

Posted by Zonk from the lots-and-lots-of-gold dept.
Grimrod writes "Dave Long of GamerDad has some musings in his column this week on the virtual world of massively multiplayer online games and the legality of selling virtual goods." Mr. Long is commenting on a story posted last week at Plaguelands detailing a supposed duping bug in EQ2 that allowed a small group of players to make thousands of dollars in U.S. currency. From the GamerDad article: "For me personally, it's impossible to grasp the idea of buying virtual goods to make my in-game character better. A lot of people seem to have a lot more money than sense though and for them that's perfectly reasonable. To further cloud the issue of who really owns virtual goods, in EverQuest II a crafted weapon keeps my name on it as the creator. If I want to sell that to someone for real money, there's no better defense than to say, "I made that!" and look right there online to see my name on the item."
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Selling Virtual Gold for Fun and Profit More

Selling Virtual Gold for Fun and Profit

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  • Paying for virtual items... my 2 cents... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by losman ( 840619 ) * on Monday August 08, 2005 @05:37PM (#13273683)
    I've played Ultima Online for a long time but recently took a break because of my schedule. I have some friends on one particular shard and I wanted to move to it. I was not about to take the time and level up my character from NOOB status to where I was in past. For a fair price (less then creating three advanced characters with EA) I purchased an account.

    To me it was worth purchasing so I can quickly get back in to the swing of things. Ultima, being on of the most seasoned MMORPG games out there has a unique economic system that has been battered by different events. In the early days it was tough to make a million gold pieces, now it's not so hard. With a solid character I can easily turn out 25-30k in gold by just visiting some dungeons. If I have some vendors then I can turn out an extras 25-30k just selling the loot I gathered in addition to the gold. Pretty good for about 1 hours worth of playing.

    So let's say I can make 50k in one hour. I can make about 1 million in 20 hours. Mind you that is 20 hours as a solo player, not with a massive group hording some area. On ebay you can by 1 million gp for about $8.00. Hmm... $8.00 or 20 hours of my time??? To start off I will take enough gold to get me going then I will make my own money in the game. That's why I'm in the game, to play and make things.

    UO suffered a gold duping bug about 3 years ago and it hurt the economy. All of a sudden everyone had lots of money too spend and gold lost its value. Very much like a real world economy. Even the gold that was sold on eBay lost its value. It use to sell for about $25 and now it is only $8.00 on average. So did duping help the sellers? Absolutely not.

    So the author states he doesn't understand why people would buy something. Try this out, what is owning stock in a company? It is very intangible and gives you the right to a certain portion of an entity. There isn't a physical thing you can touch, it is very intangible. That is the same premise with an online item. It has value to someone and they would like to have it for a certain price.

    • Re:Paying for virtual items... my 2 cents... (Score:4, Informative)

      by interiot ( 50685 ) on Monday August 08, 2005 @05:48PM (#13273772) Homepage
      I've posted these before, but this page [mine-control.com] and this page [mine-control.com] are absolute must-reads if you're interested in MMORPG economies. And they happen to deal with UO too, and in some places, with the dup bug in particular:
      In the real world, we associate hyperinflation with the almost total devastation of a country and its population. In UO this really did not happen because there was little that players wanted that was purchasable with gold. The one major exception was reagents which were also cloneable! The hyperinflation, while annoying, did not preclude players from having fun and, in the end, this is all that matters.
      This should perhaps introduce a bit of humility into the over-design of the economy - for all its complications, it is not required to make the game fun.

      That's somewhat true in World of Warcraft too. Once they reach level 60, some people create a different player to explore how other classes are played. The most obvious way to speed up the new character is to mail tons of gold (harvested at level 60) to your low-level toon. This helps to some extent (eg. allows you to buy top-notch equipment and buy all possible skills and spells), but isn't such a strong and disruptive effect that Blizzard considered removing this mail-yourself-money feature.

      Also, some data [gameusd.com] shows that inflation tends to always happen in MMORPG's, regardless of whether there's a dug bug. The papers above go a long way towards explaining the theoretical reasons for why that might be.

      • Re:Paying for virtual items... my 2 cents... (Score:4, Interesting)

        by Sylver Dragon ( 445237 ) on Monday August 08, 2005 @08:09PM (#13274866) Journal
        I would think that it's fairly obvious that inflation will always happen in MMORPG's.
        Every time a new monster spawns with treasure, there is that much more money in the economy. While there will be some downward pressure from new people joining the world, the number of people joining will always be less than the number of spawned, treasure bearing creatures. If this wasn't so you would have a very dull game. Add to this the ability of characters to sell crafted items to NPC's, which effectivly adds more money to the economy, as the NPC's purses magically refill.
        The only real downward preassure you have on the currency is the need to buy stuff from the NPC's. And again, since we are making a game where people want to progress, they will necessarily be able to generate more money doing stuff than the cost in materials from the NPC's.
        All in all, MMORPG economies can do nothing but inflate, without intervention. There is just too much money being added to the economy, and nothing to pull it back out.

        • That could be somewhat countered, though. I speak only from WoW experience here, but I think Blizzard made a HUGE mistake by trivializing vendors. I've run 4 characters now and the only things I ever buy from vendors are crafting supplies (obscenely cheap, usually, compared to the money I bring in just from killing creeps) and the occasional "limited supply" green item. I've probably spent less than a gold on each character total.

          No one who isn't extremely desperate buys grey "Vendor Trash" gear after about
          • It's actually white vendor trash, insert joke here. For some reason, it sells for much higher than auction house counterparts, which drives players to put more money into the hands of other players. The only problem I see with your suggestion is that the prices of 'good' vendor items would be through the roof, causing players to use the auction house almost as much. If they weren't, then everybody and their mother would have top-quality vendor items.
          • That would probably help, also, if they were to hold auctions for the occasional, really damn rare, or even unique item they could probably suck a ton of money out of the economy in one blow. Granted the price of said item could grow beyond belief, but that is really a non-issue. Better yet, if said item had a limited number of uses, but created a really spectacular effect when it was used, then it would not only pull the money out of the economy, but also eventually pull the whole value paid for that ite
          • One way to do this is to itroduce consumables from vendors that everyone wants and are used up while hunting ths creating money sinks. It's not perfect but it does slow down the inflation.
            Lineage II has this in the form of soul shots. They have to be crafted but use ingredients only sold at vendors. They increase your attack power thus allowing people to XP faster but a portion of the loot will go towards soul shot expense.
            • Yeah, that's what I was thinking. It totally stunned me that they had a profession creating heal potions rather than vendoring them.
            • FFXI does this in numerous ways. Unlike in WoW, you don't own your mount (chocobos here, of course), you rent it. A fee goes to an NPC everytime you want to ride one. The auction house is the center of the player economy. Every time you put something up for sale, you pay a fee of 1%-2% of your minimum price. If you're doing it in Jeuno, the central city where most of the serious trading goes on, it's more like 5%-10%. Jeuno also has a 10% fee on items you offer on your bazaar. And there's other stuff
              • WoW's Hippogryphs and Windriders don't count as an ongoing money sink? I haven't played FFXI, so I can't compare, but in WoW, the primary form of transportation is absolutely rented, not owned. Also, even though WoW mounts are two-time money sinks, they're very LARGE money sinks, which counts for something. As for the auction house in WoW, there's also two types of fees involved as well... Deposits (which are 2.5% of the vendor-buy price, for every hour that you have your item listed at the AH), and Sal
      • the real problem is that sometimes leveling up or especially grinding for that money is NOT FUN AT ALL! first off, it's not challenging - it just takes time, in wow for example the mob ai is 100% predictable as far as grinding goes - the world doesn't change at all. the game is so _easy_ that it is pathetic, it's like playing a normal rpg with godmode on except when you get ganked - you can't make serious mistakes in the game, you can't make wrong or right choices(in fact you can't make any choices at all d
      • "Once they reach level 60, some people create a different player to explore how other classes are played. The most obvious way to speed up the new character is to mail tons of gold (harvested at level 60) to your low-level toon."

        The problem you illustrate there is the whole disparity in what 1 gold is worth to a level 60 and what it's worth to a level 6. To the former (even if you weren't already maxxed and basically not needing gold any more) 1 gold won't even buy you a cape for your level, to the latter i
        • No, it's not the whole problem. It's not even a significant problem. Blizzard could clearly prohibit you from mailing an alt money. (proof: you can't bid on an alt's auction (because this would circumvent the 2-hour EQ-mailing-delay, at a cost of 5% of the vendor-buy price), so they even already have the code snippet to do it!) But they didn't choose to prohibit you from doing this. Why? Because having a lot of money does not allow you to level up significantly faster. Even the chinese-gold-farmers
          • "Blizzard could clearly prohibit you from mailing an alt money."

            And that wouldn't solve anything whatsoever. COH for example doesn't even have a mail service at all, and people still transfer money nevertheless.

            "Being able to send alts money does cause inflation, but does not significantly alter the game."

            In a lot of games, it does. E.g., COH is already being rebalanced for people who have all the best gear, and having anything less than _perfect_ equipment ("enhancements" in COH lingo) will already get you

    • Re:Paying for virtual items... my 2 cents... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 08, 2005 @06:28PM (#13274102)
      I'm in the same boat currently in World of Warcraft.

      I decided I wanted an Enchanted Thorium Breastplate, Helm, and Legplates. There are comparable drops (and in case of the Breastplate, arguably better ones), but the helm and legplates are tough to beat and it's difficult to turn down a guarantee rather than hoping for something to drop off a boss.

      So, I made my list:

        * 3 Azerothian Diamonds
        * 3 Huge Emeralds
        * 2 Large Opals
        * 2 Blue Sapphire
        * 60 Enchanted Thorium Bars ... 60 Thorium Bars ... 180 Dream Dust ... Services of an enchanter
        * 10 Essence of Water
        * 10 Essence of Earth
        * 24 Arcanite Bars ... 24 Thorium Bars ... 24 Arcane Crystals ... Services of several alchemists

      As of today, I have managed to collect everything on that list, with the exception of 13 of the Arcane Crystals, which then require transmutations by alchemists to turn them into Arcanite.

      I actually *logged* how much time I spent working on this project, as well as the gold spent. So far it's taken ~95 hours of play time (dedicated solely to this task!) spread over 26 days to acquire the materials. 95 hours... and I'm not done. I still need 13 more crystals which at the current auction house rates on my server, will cost nearly 300 gold. So I either need to get really lucky when I spot a rich thorium vein, or I need to otherwise accrue 300 gold. (and then, as an aside, I want the legs and helms with health added, so I need to get the materials for the arcanum, which can be had at the auction house with good regularity for about 20-25G for each enchantment, and then 30G to pay the NPC for each enchant).

      When this is all said and done, how much time will I have spent? I'm putting that figure anywhere between 120 and 150 hours, so I figure I have 2-3 weeks to go.

      Now, what might this have cost me if I bought the gold and paid for the materials? I figure the bill rings in somewhere in the 1000-1200 gold range, and looking at these currency sites (MySuperSales, IGE), it would probably cost me $95-$123 to complete the project. That's a worst case of $1/hour.

      Would I pay it? No. Will I pay it? No. Do I understand why some people would want to pay it? Absolutely.
      • Then there is the obligatory question: 'Isn't acquiring those items supposed to be fun?' Well it's supposed to be, but it's usually repetitive, boring, and even frustrating. Don't forget that it's in the designers best interest to keep you playing as long as possible since they rely on monthly fees.
        • I think that "fun" is subjective. Some people may find these things fun, some may find them not. If you don't find it fun, and you need to be having fun to play, then why are you doing it? Sometimes the things that are fun are the rewards from things that aren't -- take the Paladin Charger quest. *shrugs* Most people find the grinding quests in WoW (kill X for 12 items that they have a chance of dropping) aren't fun. I think they are great because not only are you completing a quest with an absolute amout
          • If you don't find it fun, and you need to be having fun to play, then why are you doing it?

            That's easy. To get to the fun part!

            Fun is definitely subjective but I think we can all agree that there are aspects that are more fun than others.

            • That's easy. To get to the fun part!

              Firs I must say: I have never played WoW or any other MMORPG.
              But I find it sad that some parts seem to be so un-fun that people pay real money in order to avoid them.

              I would never pay anybody to watch a part of a movie or a TV show for me so I don't have to watch it. Because the whole movie is supposed to be fun.
              I wouldn't pay anybody to play a video game for me either ("I played Resident Evil for you. Enjoy the final cut scene. That's 20 bucks.")
              • You can't compare a movie to an MMORPG. A movie is two hours. The average MMORPG player spends 20 hours a week for years at at a time.

                • You can't compare a movie to an MMORPG. A movie is two hours. The average MMORPG player spends 20 hours a week for years at at a time.

                  Of course it's not the same. But if people pay other people to skip parts of it, there is something wrong.
                  • Bad comarison. Games are designed to have time sinks in them and to keep you playing so you shell out that extra $15. Generally this involves a lot of boring stuff with some excitement sprinkled throughout. It's based on the same principles that gambling is. Make the reward fairly rare and sread out at random intervals and people will keep playing to hit the jackpot/get that drop.
                    • And unlike him, I did play a lot of them, including, in no particular order: UO, AC, AO, Mimesis Online, COH and WOW.

                      "Games are designed to have time sinks in them and to keep you playing so you shell out that extra $15. Generally this involves a lot of boring stuff with some excitement sprinkled throughout."

                      First of all: No. It's only MMOs who are designed like that. Normal games are (or at least used to) be designed to be fun, not as 2 hours of actual content stretched over 10,000 hours of playing time.

                      I
                    • The ones I don't understand, are the players who (A) pay 15$/month for something they'd rather skip, and (B) pay some more to get someone to skip it for them. Why? Why not just do something you actually like, instead of something you'd rather skip?

                      Overall, they like the game, a lot, but there are parts they don't like, so they skip it.

                      Don't get me wrong, if you're at least having fun, ok, keep paying for it. But if you'd actually pay RL money to skip 90% of the game, then I'll have to say he's right: then
      • Is having those items actually going to make the game more fun? Short of getting out of the noob zones (which doesn't really take long), there's no magical point at which you suddenly have good enough gear & a powerful enough character to finally start having fun.If the game's not fun at level 15 with the armor you can get through normal play & trade, what makes somebody think it'd be any better at level 30 with several hundred dollars invested in the armor?

        This I can't understand.

  • More money than sense? Sounds jealous to me. (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Shivetya ( 243324 ) on Monday August 08, 2005 @05:57PM (#13273864) Homepage Journal
    One comment that almost always pops up is that deragatory line "Some people have more money than sense". This is nothing more than jealousy. Virtual or not they are paying for effort and not necessarily the item they are receiving. What is done is weighing the cost of their play time versus what they would have to spend to have someone do it for them. Considering the prices on many things in the virtual world this is still a great deal.

    People pay others to wash their cars, mow their lawns, and do other simple work for them everyday. Why? For some it is because they are lazy, but for most it is because their time is worth more than the money paid out and that is the key to the whole argument.

    On the legality side, I am beginning to think we are going to see someone eventually go to court and beat one of the game companies. Even if that doesn't happen for a long time these companies have already proven they cannot win versus the resourcefulness of the sellers using the internet. All they can do is hit the dumb ones and make a few big hits but I would susepct 99% of the trading goes unimpeded.
    • On the legality side, I am beginning to think we are going to see someone eventually go to court and beat one of the game companies. Even if that doesn't happen for a long time these companies have already proven they cannot win versus the resourcefulness of the sellers using the internet. All they can do is hit the dumb ones and make a few big hits but I would susepct 99% of the trading goes unimpeded.

      For my personal view, I believe the eventual resolution will be that paying for an account is like pa

    • One comment that almost always pops up is that deragatory line "Some people have more money than sense". This is nothing more than jealousy. Virtual or not they are paying for effort and not necessarily the item they are receiving. What is done is weighing the cost of their play time versus what they would have to spend to have someone do it for them.

      What doesn't make sense to some people (including myself) is that when you pay real money to buy in-game items, you are paying someone to play for you. So


      • I wish I could'a paid someone to see the last Matrix for me. Then I would still have my geek creds, but would have two hours of my life back.
      • Buying gold in some online games is to avoid the drudgery of farming it. Most games will let you collect lots of gold/tokens/credit provided you are willing to farm it. By farming I mean repeating something till the cows come home. This isn't what I consider to be "playing" the game. A macro can do it and usually does. People who do it manually are no better than machines and do you really want to pay to be a machine?

        Now for a lot of players they don't have the time to do that, be it family or work con

        • I played Everquest for longer than I want to think about (5 years? 6?) and I'm playing WoW now, so I know about the games. You don't have to farm. I never did. And at the point where I found EQ boring, I moved on.

          Paying someone else to play the game for me still seems completely insane. If I don't want to camp something for a hundred hours to get the drop, I live without it. There's something about getting gear that I didn't earn that really bugs me, and most of the people I played with. We didn't

    • People pay others to wash their cars, mow their lawns, and do other simple work for them everyday. Why? For some it is because they are lazy, but for most it is because their time is worth more than the money paid out and that is the key to the whole argument.

      You see, but it's not worth more, you pig. No man's time is worth more than that of another.

      • Well I will disagree. There are many people out there whose time I consider more valuable than mine. Be they doctors, scientist, and others there are always people whom we will decide that their time is more valuable than ours. At the same time there are those whose time we consider less valuable than ours. It is about the capability to contribute to society as well as willingness to do so. It also is about the fact that not all value should be assigned monetary equivalents.

        If you don't think there are
    • One comment that almost always pops up is that deragatory line "Some people have more money than sense".

      It cracks me up when nerds turn on each other. One guy looking down his nose at another guy for buying an imaginary sword while his own credit card is billed each month so he can fight imaginary monsters with an imaginary sword he obtained by spending three weeks...battling imaginary monsters.

      (imaginary) comedy gold!

    • I'm no doubt in the minority here, but I play games to escape from real life. I'm not a hardcore roleplayer (though given a good enough environment, I'll roleplay), but I dislike getting bombarded with OOC comments and I'd rather not chat with others on topics like Iraq. I suppose that makes me a light roleplayer.

      With that said, it's pretty obvious why I don't like others "introducing" things from alternate realities (e.g. the real world). It ruins the immersion. It has little to do with jealousy for

    • Yes, people pay others to mow lawns and wash cars even though they could do so themselves.

      But there's an important difference: Those are *tedious* tasks. Online gaming is supposed to be a *fun* task.

      Why play an online game at all if it's tedious ? If a task is perceived as tedious by a large portion of the players, then why put that task into the game at all ?

      • Yes, this is a problem.

        Take Medievia for instance. Doing a trade run basically means running across the entire world map, on horseback, manually typing directions to follow a winding road.

        To "fix" this tedium, the coders have been throwing in harder and harder mob factions that attack you on the trade routes.

        Now it's like mowing your grass while under attack by archers.
      • Your missing the point. For many collecting these items, usually in game currency, is tedious.

        Read any of the many message boards these games spawn? I do. One thing I note is the number of hours some people put in to obtain items or in game wealth. To me and others the idea of sitting in one spot all day long isn't playing the game or enjoying it, it is tedium. It is something that a macro would be good at. If that is your definition of enjoying a game, repeating something for a long long time, then w
        • We're two then: because you're missing my point.

          If "collecting these items" is "tedious" for "many", why then do you insist on collecting them ?

          Better yet: If the stuff you currently have to do to obtain the items is "tedious", to most players, why is that in the game then, instead of something *fun* ?

          If a game requires you to do a macro-like job repeatedly for a long-long time, then that's not a very good game-design, is it ?

    • To me, this reveals a failure of game design. I mean, think about it - there is a part of your game that is so dull that players pay to avoid it. This is a game! If it's not fun, what the hell is the point?

      I read players talking of spending hundreds of hours to get to a decent enough level to play with ohter humans. When I play UT2k4, I get to a good enough inventory to join the fight in 10 seconds, tops.

      I think a real future would be to make a hyper-compressed MMO - basically, an FPS where you can leve
      • While it seems to be a design failure it sometimes is not.

        I like to play games that take time to 'round' out a character, then if the game allows, I can play against other ppl in the PvP section. I also like to play solo at times I want to enjoy a game. Most RPGs are long and have tedious parts that require nothing but time. (I enjoy them to a point, there has to be a limit at some point)

        The problem comes when FPS players want to PvP but don't want to put in the time to play and build up the character with

  • Virtual IP (Score:3, Interesting)

    by jafuser ( 112236 ) on Monday August 08, 2005 @05:57PM (#13273866)
    I'd ask why there still isn't a resolution if it's been considered so long and so meticulously?

    1) You don't hear about the ones which are caught early before anyone notices. Most companies don't exactly report every time there is a dupe bug.

    2) I think most games let IGE and the like continue to operate as long as they are creating a net positive value (ie their behavior brings in more players than they chase off, and/or it costs less to let them continue than to spend man-hours tracking them down).

    3) Not all MMOs are like this. For example, the MMOE Second Life [secondlife.com] explicitly grants ownership of the IP to the creator, and encourages you to sell your creations for real world profit.
    • I'll bet the developers are taking advantage of this. They would be stupid not to. Why give an employee stock options when you can double his salary at no cost to your company?

      Selling will become an integral part of the business plan eventually.
  • Phantasy Star Online is better than any MMORPG for many reasons:

    - it's extremely easy to amass more money than you'll ever spend.

    - the really cool stuff is obtained from quests, not stores.

    - item storage is limited.

    - it is multiplayer, but not massive.

    - players can't hurt each other.

    - it is an action-RPG.

    - the viewpoint is from behind the player, not above, which is better for action.

    This way, veterans usually give away what they no longer need to the newbies. And everyone helps each other in what's actually fun: killing monsters! I think this is much more fun than all the Evercracks out there.
    • I play both FFXI (just got back into it after a year long hiatus) and PSO. I can honestly say, I have lots of fun playing PSO because I'm not always competing with the other players for the rare items. If I want to look for a rare item, I'll make a closed game. The community is usually pretty nice, too.
    • Having played PSO on the Dreamcast, I can second that: Sega did an outstanding job there. Been saying it all along. So I'm not gonna disaggree with the general idea.

      But you do illustrate a point that's starting to irk me about MMOs as a whole. And while Sega did it better than others, I would argue that they're still just doing it "less wrong":

      "- it's extremely easy to amass more money than you'll ever spend."

      Well, my point is: why not go the whole way, then, and elliminate money altogether?

      The whole econom
  • (sung to the tune of Silver and Gold)

    Virtual gold, virtual and gold,
    Everyone wishes for virtual gold.
    How do you measure its worth?
    Just for the money you trade here on earth
    Virtual gold, virtual gold
    Means so much more when I see,
    Virtual gold corporations
    On every RPG.
    "What's an RPG without quarrels and petty virtual gold desperation?
    Can't really call it an RPG now, can you?
    And think of all the fun and joy that would be lost on llamas morphing,
    if all the young folks didn't get to see that sparkl

  • Player-controlled economies (Score:3, Interesting)

    by The Kow ( 184414 ) <<putnamp> <at> <gmail.com>> on Monday August 08, 2005 @08:09PM (#13274871)
    I've played WoW for a long time, so bear with me on this. I think companies like IGE that support gold/item-farming actually enhance the overall community.

    When in-demand goods are controlled by the hardcore players - the people who have the most invested in the game's community, the prices can easily fluctuate based on who wants whatever item. If I am one of only 3 people on a server who can craft an item, anyone in my guild can generally get the item at cost, but people in guilds I'm not particularly fond of might have to pay a very large premium. IGE benefits the casual gamer; aside from offering gold to everyone at the same cost, they are never subject to the fluctuations of in-game politicking.

    Anyone who's played an MMO knows that they are a harvesting ground for tempest-in-a-teacup drama bombs. These result in rapidly shifting allegiances, favors and favorites, and unpredictable shifts in power. If the economy were solely in the hands of these same people who can't figure out who they're inviting to their tea party from one week to the next, it would be very exclusionary to the casual gamer, who hasn't the time, desire, or immersion required to get involved or heavily invested in any specific quasi-faction.

    While hardcore players like myself tend to get frustrated that these newbie players can get this stuff with nothing more than a quick jaunt over to ebay, I don't generally realize that I'm not paying money for these items I have. World of Warcraft, at least, has several items that can only be obtained through raiding; a 40-man adventure into the Molten Core, or a trip to kill Onyxia. You can't buy these items because they bind to the character that loots them.

  • Rich Players Are Not A New "Problem" (Score:5, Interesting)

    by ec_hack ( 247907 ) on Monday August 08, 2005 @08:41PM (#13275049)
    The disparity of incomes allowing some gamers access to more resources or opportunities in games is not a new problem. In the play-by-mail games arena, it was a problem from day 1. When I played Starweb (http://www.flyingbuffalo.com/ [flyingbuffalo.com]) in the late 70s, I had access to free long distance calls at night (this was before Bell was broken up and long distance was pretty expensive), quite an advantage in doing diplomacy compared to the players that had to rely on letters. The Schubel and Sons game "Tribes of Crane" allowed players to run multiple tribes and pay to submit extra order sheets with each turn. A basic turn was on the order of $10 in constant dollars, and there were players spending $200 per turn. On multiple positions. Submitting orders every 10 to 14 days. Needless to say, they owned your posterior if they took a dislike to you.

  • Let's talk economics (Score:4, Insightful)

    by vga_init ( 589198 ) on Monday August 08, 2005 @11:10PM (#13275799) Journal
    I heard inflation mentioned in another post, and I thought it would be a more interesting topic to focus on. What about inflation?

    Let's not even begin to get into how real economies work (suffice it to say that the whole thing is a big mess).

    Don't MMORPG's suffer from constant inflation? There is usually a limitless supply of money and goods. Shops in these sorts of games typically have limitless supplies. Take into account supply and demand. The supply is infinite (given enough time), and the demand is finite. In theory, this drives down the value of everything in the game to nothing, even special items.

    In terms of availability, there is no such thing as scarcity. Our fundamental theories of economics involve the limited supply of goods, but what happens in the face of a never-ending stream? How can economy exist! There's no intrinsically economic reason why EVERYBODY can't have the best items in the game. So why don't they?

    The only constraint is time. People need to spend time to accumulate enough of this infinite stock, but it's within the grasp of everyone. Very equalizing, isn't it?

    These games have a perfect socialist utopia where supply is a non-issue and prices/wages are fixed and proportional. You get out what you put into it, basically, and people are supposed to get what they deserve.

    Enter the evil that is capitalism and human greed. Using real world cash, people are able to abuse the game system and give themselves an unfair advantage. These people now have access to supplies they didn't earn and don't deserve.

    Make whatever argument you will about how said people function and make money in the real world, but the game world is not the real world. They don't belong together, and their economies are not supposed to be connected in any way other than the basic game fees one pays as a client.

    Don't let capitalism destroy our gaming community! The games are designed by their creators to be fair and balanced. They are not supposed to be subject to class separation, which worms it's way in thanks to "real money." I say we do everything in our power to protect our idealistic little game worlds and give a decent playing experience to everyone rather than a select few who can afford it.

    • Enter the evil that is capitalism and human greed. Using real world cash, people are able to abuse the game system and give themselves an unfair advantage. These people now have access to supplies they didn't earn and don't deserve.

      Make whatever argument you will about how said people function and make money in the real world, but the game world is not the real world. They don't belong together, and their economies are not supposed to be connected in any way other than the basic game fees one pays as a cl

    • Um, say I'm a ka-jillionaire and I hire a bunch of high schoolers to play GameDeJeur a bunch. When I get home from work, they should be online and go on quests with me to get me the good stuff. How do you design your game to avoid that? It appears that we're all just friends.
    • You have no idea what you are talking about. Everything in game has to be generated by people. Someone paying for it, doesn't generate new gold or items in the game, it is merely traded hands. This is no different then me joining a server with a friend who has played a long time who sets me up with everything I want. Really, this balances things for the casual gamer. He now is able to get better items without spending tons of time. People who have tons of time can sell their items to get more money.
    • Scarcity is very common, actually. People get stuff and then HOARD IT. I didn't say use it. I didn't say it was useful to them. I said they HOARD IT. Some people probably do it to drive prices up (in fact I've heard and believe accusasions of it in the Asheron's Call imbue material market).

      Rare finds are just that: rare. You might not see one for many many hours of playing. Oh sure there's tons of loot: and most of it's cash or junk. But cash doesn't kill monsters, equipment does. You can buy equipment from
  • beating cheaters to death for FUN and PROFIT.

    i mean after all, it's the cheaters that use bots to "farm" and use exploits/bugs to do other malicious things like stealing accounts, items from other users, duplicating items, etc.

    ironic that developers consider that MMO games are going to save the industry, yet looking at what people have to put up with, will be its downfall.

    anyway, i've got the-underdogs.org and tons of single player games i've bought in the past to keep me company well into the future.
  • I don't understand people that complain that the buying and selling of virtual goods ruins online goods for those that don't want to spend extra money on their character. It doesn't ruin the game for the others. It just makes it profitable for them in the long run, with all sorts of suckers running around throughing real life dough at them.
    • It's not the buying and selling of virtual goods that's the problem. It's the buying and selling of virtual MONEY that's the problem.

      The people that work for places like IGE and such, many of them Chinese workers who just watch macro-controlled characters getting paid a pittance for their time, are the problem.

      They farm all the good items in the game, especially patterns/recipies/etc. needed to learn professions, and then sell what they can in the games for outrageous prices.

      You can see stuff going f

  • Goldfarming.com [goldfarming.com]has an interesting article discussing the history and some of the pros and cons of the practice of "gold farming" from the article The History The Good and The Bad of Gold Farming [goldfarming.com] "We can see the parallels between the real world and these new virtual worlds we have created and if history has taught us anything if there is a way for people to make money they will do it and there is little we can do to stop it. We do have choices we can allow it and let these virtual markets and real world eco
    • Let me tell you a story, which hopefully should be a metaphor for the problem we have here: let's say someone made a game where thrown weapons do damage purely based on their weight. Hey, the programmer was tired, and that looked like a reasonable shortcut to take. So soon every single player runs around throwing grand pianos, instead of using throwing knives. Every other thief and assassin in the game carries a piano by now, and every other PvP situation involves throwing grand pianos and anvils at each ot

  • Compare it to golf (Score:3, Insightful)

    by borkus ( 179118 ) on Tuesday August 09, 2005 @10:19AM (#13278281) Homepage
    Admittedly, the G in MMORPG stands for game, but folks take their games pretty seriously. People drop huge amounts of cash on recreation of all kinds.

    For example, $50 for some new toys is nothing compared to the money people can spend on golf. If you're an avid golfer, you could buy spend nearly $300 on a putter [golfsmith.com] to shave a few strokes off you game while on the green. Want to get to the green in fewer strokes? How about a new driver for nearly $400 [golfsmith.com]? Sure you could practice a little more, but most golfers are lucky to get in one game a week unless they're retirees. So instead, you spend a little extra money to have a better experience in the game.

  • [A] crafted weapon keeps my name on it as the creator. If I want to sell that to someone for real money, there's no better defense than to say, "I made that!" and look right there online to see my name on the item.

    This really isn't a convincing argument if you think about it beyond a superficial level.

    First, if Jim Smith, the player, logs in with the character Lewtzmaker and creates a pair of Galoshes of Sloshing, the galoshes will say they were made by Lewtzmaker, not Jim Smith. Mr. Smith may argue that L
  • Hi Everyone, I wanted to quickly jump in here and introduce myself - I'm Andraste, the Community Relations Manager for IGE (goes into bullet-time dodging gunfire). ;) I know there are a lot of questions, and misconceptions out there about what we do and how we do it, so I thought this would be a great opportunity to not only get to know many of you, but to clear up a lot of those concerns. Such as - we do not participate in nor condone any sort of abusive farming or duping practices. But instead of boring

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