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MMOG Sites Under IGE Merging?

Posted by Zonk on Wed May 03, 2006 08:22 PM
from the dirty-pool dept.
The Almighty Buck Role Playing (Games)
CTD writes "Grimwell Online notes that IGE has announced a merger of networks involving: Thottbott, Allakhazam, OGaming, and L2Orphus. There is a thread in the Allakhazam forums that brings all the release data together - but still leaves some questions about what is to come. Grimwell raises one in his post about this: 'Even more fun for our friends who work PR for gaming companies. IGE = RMT, which is not the Devil - but is not exactly welcomed at most companies. Will this move help push things past the tipping point and force developers to deal with the new, larger network?'"
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  • Sellout? (Score:2, Informative)

    by Hossicle (945360)
    from the Alakazam admin: "We are now owned by a company that owns a bunch of stuff, including IGE. They bought both of us (and several other sites as well) and then split us into separate divisions so that there is no interaction between them. You know my
    • If he honestly believes that he's whacked... remember when Hotmail sold? Ya MS did'nt mess around with Hotmail at all....

  • Very thourough detail on IGE, this purchase & (Score:5, Informative)

    by CTD (615278) on Wednesday May 03 2006, @08:58PM (#15259302) Homepage
    This was put where I could find it, and is a very interesting read. Lots of great detail about IGE/Allakhazam if you want to learn more.

    http://wow.azzor.com/445/truth_about_IGE.php [azzor.com]

  • The Devil is in the Details... (Score:3, Informative)

    by iCEBaLM (34905) <icebalm@ice[ ]m.com ['bal' in gap]> on Wednesday May 03 2006, @09:39PM (#15259489)
    IGE = RMT, which is not the Devil

    I wish he would speak for himself! RMT has almost destroyed the economy of FFXI to the point where you have to buy in game currency (gil) in order to afford anything of even moderate worth. This was due to the RMT gil sellers dominance and monopoly over entire mines, harvesting and logging areas, notorious monsters, etc. Only recently that SE has banned 700 accounts and seized over 300 billion gil [playonline.com] have things been normalizing. This was done in early Feb and prices are still dropping, slowly but surely, on most commodity items.

    RMT has real effects on MMORPGs, some games more than others depending on how the economy works.

      • Right, who could blame IGE? (Score:5, Insightful)

        by Somatic (888514) on Thursday May 04 2006, @01:26AM (#15260368) Journal
        Yeah, blame the sellers for meeting demand. Except they didn't create the demand, Square-Enix did. It's Square-Enix's game design that causes the demand that the gold sellers exploit. [...] It's hardly IGE's fault that Square-Enix misdesigned their game.

        I see. So, because these companies only destroy half the games they infiltrate, that makes it ok. The games that do get ruined were asking for it. Pick a different reason for every game, but it's the game designer's fault for not being able to handle these cartels when they try to take over. Because after all, this has only happened to FFXI.

        Cartels like IGE ruin games for profit. They work full time, either exploiting bugs or taking what they want by brute force. They're larger than the largest guilds. They have the financial means, and the manpower, to get what they want in any of a hundred ways.

        Blaming the gamers or the game designers for the fact that these guys exist is like blaming someone for getting mugged. Yes, you had a lock on your front door, but was it a titanium lock with 53 bolts? Because these guys just designed a way to pick the old 52-bolt locks last week. Go ahead and upgrade, but just remember, there are a thousand guys in your hallway with hundreds of millions of dollars of resources, and they'll be working on that lock 24/7, and every time they get in, it's your fault. Also, you can't tackle the problem like a normal security expert does, because what these guys do is apparently not illegal. They have nothing to lose, in fact everything to gain, by trying again, and again, and again.

        Online games obviously need to defend against it better, but blaming them because this huge, sustained effort against them exists is just insane.

        [ Parent ]

      • Re:The Devil is in the Details... (Score:5, Insightful)

        by GundamFan (848341) on Thursday May 04 2006, @06:13AM (#15260994)
        You know... I am tired of hearing "World of Warcraft is the best MMO ever" every time somone mentions another MMO. I won't get into details about why I take issue with WoW... but I will say this, perhaps the reason WoW is so sucessfull has to do with its population rather than specifics of content... if you take any MMO and fill the servers up it will be more fun (for those who can get in) because if you compare WoW to most other MMOs feature to feature it is a very simple game. ...Forgive my rant, have fun in WoW or any other game you deside to play... but please don't try to make everyone who doesn't play guilty about it.
        [ Parent ]
      • World of Warcraft hasn't been having anywhere near as large problem with goldsellers than FFXI has. The reason is that WoW was designed well, and FFXI - well, wasn't.

        Right, just yesterday my friend at work bought WoW gold. Another friend told me if he trad
      • Fuck you.

        The game is more than bearable if you actually do things other than farm and level jobs (hint: HELM AND CRAFTING).
        It's not supposed to be a race to 75 - the game is the journey. Good fucking god...I keep forgetting that most of the end-game people

        • Re:The Devil is in the Details... (Score:4, Interesting)

          by Psmylie (169236) * on Thursday May 04 2006, @12:52PM (#15264070) Homepage
          I never have mod points when I need them. Maybe IGE could get into the "instant rate-up" biz.

          I've played FFXI since the NA release. I've never bought gil. I've never farmed excessively, I have one job at 75, and my highest craft skill is 60. And that's in cooking, hardly the best profit maker in the game. And I've always been able to buy what I needed. You don't NEED the best gear, you can get along fine without it, and decent gear for your level is very easy to obtain. The best of the best gear is SUPPOSED to be hard to get, that's what makes it valuable.

          SE didn't make things expensive. Players supply almost all the high-end gear. Players set the prices, players pay the prices. Why go and blame SE for something that we did to ourselves?

          To the grandparent post, and to anyone else who thinks that you need to zip through this game as fast as possible, and feel the need to buy gil so you never have to be without the best equipment... Maybe this is not the game for you. SE set the rules to the game, and instead of playing by those rules, you cheat. Nobody forces you to cheat or to play this game. Go elsewhere if you can't hack it. And anyone who buys gil/gold/platinum can go straight to hell.

          [ Parent ]

          • Re:The Devil is in the Details... (Score:1)

            by Anonymous Coward
            Why go and blame SE for something that we did to ourselves?

            At the release of the CoP expansion there was an NPC that would buy back items for more gil than it sold that item for. Players who realized this maxed their gil. SE did not correct this for almo
    • RMT has many negative effects, but the assertation that you have to buy gil to progress is just flat out wrong. Anyone who believes it is just looking for an excuse for their cheating.

      SE doesn't make big announcements when they ban people to placate the m
      • RMT has many negative effects, but the assertation that you have to buy gil to progress is just flat out wrong. Anyone who believes it is just looking for an excuse for their cheating.

        If you are insinuating that I buy gil then I expect you to retract your
        • In the current FFXI economy 5 million gil isn't really a huge amount of money. At level 70 you really should be able to make 5 million in under a day's play. OK, so that is still quite a long time, but not compared to the time it will have taken you to get
          • In the current FFXI economy 5 million gil isn't really a huge amount of money. At level 70 you really should be able to make 5 million in under a day's play.

            5 million gil is a huge amount of money. You can make it in a day if you are *lucky* doing BC/KSNM
    • Define normalizing? Falling prices cut both ways, and you get less of a profit on the things you sell to earn gil towards that now-cheaper thing you want to buy.

      This is complicated by the fact that it is basically impossible to make a profit by selling thi
    • It wasn't true that you had to buy gil in FFXI. Yes, there was a period of hyperinflation, but that didn't really make a huge amount of difference as the price of farmed items went up as well, as did the profit from crafting. I never bought gil, and never
      • The econemy in FFXI really isn't very player controlled. Lets look at some of the hard limits on player control of the econemy in FFXI. Many goods and services can only be obtained from NPCs, many goods can only be 'produced' once per character, many can
        • The econemy in FFXI really isn't very player controlled. Lets look at some of the hard limits on player control of the econemy in FFXI. Many goods and services can only be obtained from NPCs, many goods can only be 'produced' once per character, many canno
  • one gold farming group to rule them all ..
  • Ignoring all the gold-farming issues, am I the only one who finds the idea of having a massive database of where everything can be found to be sort of self-defeating?

    I hate "grinding" as much as most people, but isn't part of the coolness factor of having
    • There are a lot of reasons to use something like this.

      As a noob, sometimes the directions the NPC gives are misleading. "Go take this to some guy north of here" is a perfect example. That happens in WoW all the time. The guy might actually be NorthEast
      • I have to agree with you.

        Most of the time, what I want to do is find out where some obscure mob is to be found, or find out what their idiotic spawn rate is.

        Forgive me for having a family, but I don't find the idea to sit in a zone/area for hours/days on e
      • The fact that you need to create a new character in the first place is one of the fundamental problems with many MMO's out now.

        It's a cover for poorly designed game mechanincs.

        Of course WoW is a prime example of Cut-And-Paste developement at it's finest.
      • Your first point is true. Although I agree with the grandparent that going and looking everything up online and acquiring it kind of defeats the point, sometimes it's nice to have a resource when you don't want to run around in circles for 4 hours.

        On the o
    • There are people playing those games to show off. "Look, I got a level $maxlevel char, with $rareitem and $rank, and $insaneamount money!".

      They don't care how they got it. If money is no issue, simply buy it. If it is, the fastest way to get that is by gri
    • I played the style you mention in Ultima Online back in the day, never looked up information, considered it cheating. End result? Never maxed, never best gear etc etc... if it takes some people MONTHS to get that epic gear WHEN THEY KNOW EXACTLLY WHAT TO
    • Not exactly. First off, quests are meant to be solved communally. Maybe not on exactly that level, but there's a quest in EQ2 that, for example, requires you to traverse the globe searching for 20-some-odd dragon runes. These things are tiny and hidden in
  • It's a sad day for MMO fans. I'm a WoW addict myself, thinking about switching to Goblin Workshop. I don't mind the google gold ads, but anyone know if they have a shady parent company?
    • No idea what their parent company might be, but I found their site to be next to absolutely useless.
  • L2Orphus was purchased by IGE almost a year ago now, and they've had a massive banner ad for IGE for 2 years now. RMT ruined Lineage II. And while it looks like Square is doing something about it for FFXI, there's no action on NCSoft's part on L2. It's
    • It's an inevitability. Companies exist to fill a demand. IGE came into being approximately 4 years after RMT started happening on eBay. If you want a non-RMT-able game, the only solution is completely different game design. It may not even be possible.
      • I agree that it may not be possible, but it is possible to minimize the impact of RMTs. This is probably been best showin in WoW, from the games I've played. Money is easily made, and the best of the best gear is mostly only available via Bind on pickup it

  • How they are swinging it (Score:3, Informative)

    by falcon5768 (629591) <Falcon5768@nospam.comcast.net> on Thursday May 04 2006, @06:43AM (#15261081) Journal
    from how the partys involved are describing it, there is a new parent company called RPGholdings who has a division that owns the gaming sites, and a division that owns IGE and their sister sites.

    The the CEO of all of them IS IGE's CEO, so in essense, they made a fake company, bought out everyone (including IGE) then said "oh btw, Brock Pierce is now your new boss"

    • Reading the posts its quite funny how the userbase is splitting. There are more than a few older posters, with high post counts and premium subscriptions, walking away out of disgust. The issue isn't just that Allakhazam was bought out by IGE/RPGholdings,
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