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Mythic Rips SOE a New One 115

Posted by Zonk from the that-would-be-pvp dept.
GameDailyBiz has a statement by Mythic's head honcho Mark Jacobs. The CEO of Dark Age of Camelot's developer takes great exception to the aforementioned EQII auction site. From the article: "I'm disappointed with the decision from a leader in the MMO industry to go down a path which in the past, has been an anathema to them and remains so to just about every other MMORPG company in the industry. I think that not only supporting the sale of in-game characters, items and currency, but also taking a 'cut' of those sales, is not only a mistake but one of the worst decisions in the history of the MMORPG industry..."
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Mythic Rips SOE a New One More

Mythic Rips SOE a New One

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  • *Raises his fist* Fight the power!

  • SOE will have bigger plans... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by dhakbar ( 783117 ) on Saturday April 23, 2005 @12:30AM (#12320535)
    SOE is always looking for a bigger slice of the pie. If they can be hypocritical enough to open a sanctioned auction site after years of banning players for auctioning things off in their games, they will do anything. Be prepared for a whole new breed of micropayment based MMORPGs.

    Would you like to loot this UberSword of Might +7? That will be $0.10, tyvm.

  • Sure (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Goldberg's Pants ( 139800 ) on Saturday April 23, 2005 @12:36AM (#12320562) Journal
    The twat will change his tune when he sees how much money they make. The activity will ALWAYS go on. Why NOT make it legit, and make a percentage?

    It's just sour grapes.

    • Re:Sure (Score:1, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Because then we'll wind up with games designed around the purchase of important items and not around game play, which - wait, what am I saying, Final Fantasy XI came out three years ago.

    • Re:Sure (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Sancho ( 17056 )
      I agree.
      There have been two reasons I've read about for companies banning the sale of in-game items. The first is that it promotes farming/camping which is detrimental to the game because it prevents players who aren't trying to make a buck from getting the items. This inherently implies that making a buck is a bad thing (it's not). Also, with the farming that still goes on in WoW, it's pretty clear that banning auctions isn't a total solution to this problem (although I see that WoW auctions still pop u

      • Re:Sure (Score:2, Insightful)

        by Anonymous Coward
        You kinda goofed up problem #1. The problem is that the games are poorly designed so that players can get monopolies on certain resources.

        Just like in real-world economies, monopolies are bad.

        Of course, the solution to this isn't to disallow real-world trades of in-game resources, it's to prevent the creation of monopolies in the first place. So far, no game - not even World of Warcraft - has really succeeded in doing that. Partially because they haven't really tried.

        Problem #1 really is monopolies, a
        • Wanna fix it? make monsters that don't have weapons/treasure. kill 800 wolves and get nothing. You won't be hunting wolves. But if the tower is in the middle of the forest and there are 800 wolves in the forest, along with 80,000 deer to "support" them, and you want to get to the tower (for the loot left from an ancient age) then you 're gonna have to kill a few wolves.

          Farming? Make real farming a job. And this can be a fine activity for the people who can't play a lot, because you'll need to be "working t
        • Problem #2 stems from bad game design as well; if getting stuff in the game wasn't so tediously time-consuming, then most people wouldn't feel the need to buy things with real-world money. Some still would, but it would cut down on the practice a lot. Of course, this bad game design is done on purpose, since there's no other way that any of the current MMORPG developers have thought of to keep people playing for longer than a few days.

          Rob
      • > people with lots of money advance more easily than people without much money.

        Ohhhh.... I get it. You mean that it's like real life....

        T

        hehe
      • It may seem like this is a fair solution but I can almost grantee you don't play any MMORPG, These games you need the time to learn your class I'm an avid player of everquest and you can tell when someone bought their character, most of the time these people are greedy, selfish, don't care about anyone else. If 20 people die because they decide to run for their lives and train the entire zone they'll do these people are why I can't stand doing anything else then the people I'm friends with in games.
        Also n
        • How much is your guarantee worth?

          I've mudded for years, and only recently gave it up (as the last mud I played on had shitty admins, and they pretty much spoiled the experience for me.) During my times of mudding, I played Ultima Online through the first expansion. UO only held my interest as long as it did because I loved the world. I'd played all the Ultimas (not in order, sadly) and was infatuated with them, so UO was the next obvious extension. I never spent a dime on virtual goods there.

          Next was
    • The activity will ALWAYS go on. Why NOT make it legit, and make a percentage?

      Well, like TFA says, it opens you up to numerous legal issues. Once they have real world value it becomes much harder to argue that they're the property of SOE (or any other publisher/developer). Whenever you do something that weakens the value of an item, you open yourself up to lawsuits. Here are just a few I thought of off to the top of my head:

      1) Server goes down? They get sued for potential earnings lost during the outag

  • Could sales offset subscription prices? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Dr. Spork ( 142693 ) on Saturday April 23, 2005 @01:06AM (#12320685)
    What if Sony made enough money from all these sales that they could discount the monthly costs of the service for everyone else? Or what if it was enough so that all the "peon" accounts would be free, though if you didn't want to toil through the dreary lower levels and work your way up, you would have to pay to power up?

    I think that really would be great! I mean, you sell a lot more crack when you fist hand it out for free. Oh, even better: Maybe all the free accounts would have perma-death (unless they can secure in-game means of resurrection) while the paid accounts have a "guardian angel" that auto-resurrects them. Or how about this: a flat-rate direct withdrawl of $5 from your bank account for every time you click "Yes, resurrect my character"? Mark my words, somebody is going to try this, and if they do it right, they will succeed!

    If they really use the crack model, they will even let you download the game itself without cost, knowing that sooner or later, you'll find something in the game worth paying for with real money.

    But before they do any of this, they need to get the bugs out of the in-game paying system, and maybe that's what this is.

    So is this a something we should fear? No way! It will be great!

  • that Sony's trading in, and not 'items' in the traditional sense. That +10 Axe you just bought? It's software, and Sony's no more bound to guarantee it's value than Microsoft is bound to gaurantee Excel won't eat your work. Most states allow for minimal or no damages caused by defective or faulty software, so the most you'll get out of Sony for losing that $500 dollar sword is $5 bucks (except in Nebraska, of course).

    Put another way, can you sue Microsoft because Word XP won't read your Word 5.0 documen
    • No, Sony is running a commodity exchange with this, not "selling software".

      The commodity is control of items on game servers. If the NASDAQ or NYSE unilaterally delisted a stock or did some other action that killed its value that didn't follow they'd be facing so many lawsuits so fast they'd drill a mile into the earth's crust, they'd be spinning so fast.
    • OMG YOU ARE RETARDED

      I'm sorry, but your analogy is garbage. You did not PAY MONEY for the document that you are editing in Excel, and Excel documents can be backed up. Items on MMOs cannot be "backed up."
  • I don't play MMOGs so can someone explain to me why this is bad? I never did understand why companies banned this type of activity. If it's a matter of rich players being able to get really strong because they can just buy stuff, isn't that the case in real life too? Rich folks can get nice cards, big houses, and live-in call girls. We can't. Why is it wrong in a MMOG?
    • For one it undermines the very purpose of the game: Roleplaying. It degrades the entire game world into "a hunt for loot, camp spawns" power gamer fest. Sure, this has always been an element of any given MMORPG, but before there was at least some kind of line in the sand between the real world and the virutal one.

      By that I mean the economics of the real world (money) had never legally invaded the game world, sure people sold stuff, but it was kept in check. Now, the whole game's prupose could well degra
      • Well, yes. But they're a pretty poor "RP" in the first place. Everyone starts off the same. In a real RPG (ie, pen-n-paper) I can be whatever I want if the DM doesn't consider it powergaming. If I want to be a rich snob with robes made out of spun gold, and all sorts of magical trinkets, because my character's family made money buying and selling 'x' during the great 'y', I can do that. In most CRPGs, and all MMORPGs, I cannot, and that's not true roleplaying.

        Now, admittedly, most people playing these game
      • What these MMOGs are *supposed* to be is defined by the dominant market demographic, because they are businesses.

        Don't confuse the reason they made the game with the reason you play it. They want money, you want to be entertained in the way that works for you. Do you really think any of these companies care about roleplaying? Only if the money there.

        So far the roleplaying schtick has worked and netted more cash than anything else, because it pleases most of the players. However, the roleplayers are sl
      • I am sorry, but MMORPGs have absolutely nothing to do with RP. They don't even attempt to try and intergrate RP into these games. Further, even if they did attempt to make the games more RP friendly, starting everyone at level zero would not be one of the things to do to make the game more RP friendly. The idea of starting at level 1 and leveling up has nothing to do with RP. In fact, any decent RP game worth its salt won't even have levels.

        If you want to see a real RP game, I suggest www.armageddon.or
    • 1) Its a roleplaying game. You aren't truly playing a role if you're real life monetary situation comes into play.

      2) Every one starts out in the same boat (literally, in EQ2). Your choices dictate where you go from there. There is some element of competition to it: people want to be one of the first to get some item, or to defeat some bad guy. This takes effort. Being able to buy items without the effort is viewed as cheating.

      If rich football teams could pay extra to get their opponent's goal posts r
  • Mark Jacobs is upset because he didn't have the balls to do it first. He fell for the imaginary ethics dillemma about not selling in-game items, and someone exploited this weakness against him.
    Today, Asian farmers are making the profits from character and item sales. Publishers get none of that money, so there is zero chance that this provides cash for a better game. Let the publisher get a slice of the action and you've given the companies more incentive to stay heavily invested into the games and perhap

    • Re:Jacobs is high, this is a good idea. (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Dachannien ( 617929 ) on Saturday April 23, 2005 @01:57AM (#12320860)
      Today, Asian farmers are making the profits from character and item sales.

      Actually, the Asians involved (usually Chinese) make a normal working wage from their farming work. The head honchos are frequently from other countries (US, Canada, etc.).

      I challenge the old "it will ruin the game!" argument, with the simple fact that this sales activity has been going on for several years now.

      Talk to the many, many people who left Lineage 2 or FFXI for WoW due to the rampant unchecked item farming. It's not merely the out-of-game transactions that cause the problem (though it does cause problems - inexperienced players at the helm of experienced characters can result in party wipes for unsuspecting fellow players, for one example; and unwitting buyers who purchase characters with severe reputation issues on a server are another example). The real problem is the sheer scope of the efforts made by the item/cash farmers, and the impact that a full-fledged industry has on a microcosmic playerbase. These games aren't designed to be leveraged in this way, so when someone(s) does leverage them by camping the same mobs 24/7 to the detriment of normal (even hardcore) players, it causes a significant CS issue. Additionally, the behavior of gold farmers has been demonstrated to be destructive to the game economy, causing rampant inflation. In at least one case in WoW, a known gold farming team bought out every item in the Auction House and re-auctioned them at astronomical levels, ruining the economy for casual gamers who suddenly can't augment their gear with new gear within their purchasing capacity, and damaging the economy for hardcore gamers who find themselves paying insane prices to outfit their alts.

      This isn't sour grapes, and Mark Jacobs raises a legitimate and important concern. It's a wonder he hasn't said something earlier, though. SOE has always been eager to exploit their game for a quick buck. They have on numerous occasions changed their original tune on a variety of CS issues so that they could charge money for it (character name changes, transferring characters from one server to another, transferring characters from one account to another), and they also have taken an incredible step by running the first pay-to-play MMOG to include some form of advertising/branding in their game with the /pizza command (AO doesn't count, since the ads are served to those who choose to play for free).

      • Re:Jacobs is high, this is a good idea. (Score:4, Interesting)

        by Soul-Burn666 ( 574119 ) on Saturday April 23, 2005 @03:51AM (#12321262) Journal
        The solution to item farming (and generally "endless levelling"), can be something like they did in Guild Wars [guildwars.com] where:

        1. Every area is instanced for the party visiting it, therefore no "kill stealing", "training" or other non-PvP things players can harm others with.

        2. There is a level of cap of 20, which can be reached in about 20-30 hours of gaming. What CAN be still upgraded are skills. The idea behind the game is that the winner of the battle won't be the one who played for more time, but rather the person who planned the best skill combination (you can have 8 skills per battle, out of 150~ unlockable) and has the best cooperation with party members.
        Since everyone is pretty much the same, stat-wise, there's no reason to sell players. To an extremety, it would be like selling your CounterStrike or Warcraft3 player.
        The game is then in a sense a lot like M:TG. It's not about the time you waste "levelling", but rather on how you strategically choose your 8 skills to use (think a 60 card deck) and how you use them. Just like a skilled M:TG player can beat a lower level player with a much weaker deck, simply by playing smarter.
        Also, think first person shooters... as you near the end of the game, sure you get better weapons, but generally still use the weaker ones. The game becomes much harder, but you, as the player, can handle it better because you know when to use what.

        3. Another reason I think people buy high level items for real cash, is that most MMORPGs have a monthly subscription fee, people think: "instead of paying 30$ for levelling my char for 2 months, i'll just buy one". GuildWars is free other than the initial cost (again, think M:TG).
        What is planned tho, are optional expansions, which btw will be balanced with the previous "chapters", but will let you have more variety. Again, think about expansions in M:TG, the new cards are generally balanced like before, but since you have more choises, you can have better skill combinations.
        • remember too, MT:G got in a lot of trouble when card prices went thru the roof... even though they were "just a publisher". Magic took the correct road in the matter by being the "publisher" rather than "gatekeeper". If SOE's server's wipe out, they're responsible for the $$ value of your missing items... espically if they recieved a cut of the profits!

          I've mentioned before, the key is to make all things in a game limited... it means that games need to rebalanced to make outside auctions irrelevent. A

    • On the whole, I agree with the parents views to allowing the trading of online items to happen.

      The only proviso I have to this is that anyone providing an officially sanctioned site for trading of the items makes it crystal clear that the cut they are taking from each and every trade is in the same manner as the service provided by companies like Ebay.

      The important difference with SOE providing the service is that they are also the ones providing the product (the vendor) in the first place and may implici

  • The guy is right (Score:5, Interesting)

    by KingSkippus ( 799657 ) on Saturday April 23, 2005 @01:33AM (#12320785) Homepage Journal

    Well I, for one, think that Mark Jacobs is 100% right.

    I don't want to get all nostalgic, but does anyone else in here remember the ancient days of yore when an RPG was played with maps, miniatures, and funny-shaped dice, when the object of the game was to have fun by escaping into fantasy worlds and pretending you're someone else, someone who may be like you or may be as different from you as night and day? We used to make fun of people who got too much into the game mechanics. We called them "roll" players.

    I feel sorry for people who have grown up recently and only know of RPG's as computer games. Something important has been lost when the creativity and imagination of a game master was replaced with a computer's unrelenting adherence to game rules and regulations. The goal is no longer to escape and have fun, it is to WIN. Now, players will do anything to have a bigger and better sword than the next guy has, who is trying to have a bigger and better axe than you have.

    Don't get me wrong, I like some of the games out there today. I play City of Heroes [cityofheroes.com] myself, and I enjoy it a lot, but it's not the same. It's hard to feel very heroic when you have to deal with typical conversations like, "Hey, can you help me with a sewer run? I'm trying to get to level 38 and need to farm some krakens. We don't need to kill the hydra, because I'm only two bubbles away." When I stick solely to roleplaying and completely avoid game-speak, I get accused of being a weirdo and generally avoided. (Disclaimer: Yes, there are exceptions, very few and far between.)

    The whole online auction stuff is a wonderful illustration of just how non-RP computer RPG's have become. I have a question for people who participate in such silliness: If you're not going to acquire your goodies by playing the game, why bother playing at all? Why not just stick to Progress Quest [progressquest.com] and save yourself all of that tedium of having to actually earn stuff?

    As for Sony, I guess Mark covered it pretty well. Can't you see that what you're doing is hurting the genre of RPG's more than they already have been? What the hell does buying a sword on "Station Exchange" have to do with role playing? Nothing. In the article, Mark says:

    We will gladly 'leave money on the table' to ensure that whether or not you like our games, that they remain as that, games and not an entertainment version of day-trading.

    I say hooray for him and for Mythic for not selling out, once and for all making the R in RPG meaningless. As for me, I've never played EverQuest, and now you can count me out for good. Apparently, there's a large market of people out there playing this game who believe owning virtual goodies is more important than role playing, and because of this, it is obviously not a game I would be interested in.

    • Big Deal (Score:3, Insightful)

      by EnglishTim ( 9662 )
      Online RPGs have always been less about roleplaying - it's difficult to see how they could be any other way, without the presence of a gamesmaster/referee to help guide play.

      You say that Sony is hurting the 'genre of RPGs', but I don't see how that's the case. What they're doing is expanding the genre - you'll still have your tabletop RPGs, and if you don't like MMORPGs that have auctions, fine - play the ones that don't.

      • It's mainly the players that determine how much (or how little) an RPG is an RPG. I was mainly just lamenting that in all MMORPGs the vast majority of players invariably slide towards rollplaying instead of roleplaying.

        However, I'm VERY disappointed that not only is Sony not discouraging this type of play, they are now actively encouraging it, facilitating it, and taking part in it. There's a huge difference, and it's all for a few lousy bucks. I echo Mark's sentiments when he says, "Shame on you."

        I

        • "What's next, for an extra fee each month, you'll level 10% faster?"
          There are several korean based MMOGs where it goes exactly like that, except that the game is a free download and there's no subscription.
          You're not FORCED to pay anything, but you can buy double exp cards for about 10$/month, or various items which are just for show off like cool clothes.
          Again, the game is free to download and play, the company only profits from these "cash items", and even tho not everyone buys, they make big bucks.
          Anyway
        • However, I'm VERY disappointed that not only is Sony not discouraging this type of play, they are now actively encouraging it, facilitating it, and taking part in it. There's a huge difference, and it's all for a few lousy bucks. I echo Mark's sentiments when he says, "Shame on you."

          But if the majority of people seem to prefer 'rollplaying' as you put it, why should Sony put obstacles in their way? I realise it's not to your taste, but it evidently is to the taste of the majority of their customers. I don

    • Re:The guy is right (Score:1, Insightful)

      by Nairoz ( 856164 )
      Different people play the games for different reasons. I used to play Anarchy Online back in the day, and I played for the social aspect - I didn't really level that much once I hit level 60 (the level cap was 200 in the basic game). And I still played for a good few months after hitting level 60, until other circumstances meant I had to stop playing.

      Some people are hardcore grinders and powerlevellers - who want to get ahead however they can. Including buying stuff with real money. But... since they
    • I still don't see how what you typed has anything to do with how this is wrong. It's obvious that today's MMO's are completely different games from the PnP games you remember so fondly. I don't see why you get so caught up in this fact. Sony's decisions has no relation to ruining or hurting the actual genre of RPGs, more or less only affecting the future decisions of similar diablo-esque MMO designers. There's a reason that you're viewed weirdly when you roleplay, and that's because today's MMO games offer
    • does anyone else in here remember the ancient days of yore when an RPG was played with maps, miniatures, and funny-shaped dice

      You mean the vast array of miniatures and castles etc. that you could buy using real-world cash for each item?

      Your point is?

  • Ebay can be seen as a meter of your MMORPG's health. If there are a lot of auctions selling in game content, people still want stuff and the economy is flourishing. If there are no ebay auctions, theres nothing in the game that people want, and your game sucks.

    If you don't have ebay, you have givers. Givers just give items to noobs. They mess the 'economy', just the same as ebayers do.

    If you really want to fix the economy, don't do item decay, that sucks. Do this: Allow users to flip a coin on extr
  • Increasingly, our customer service department has had to bear the brunt of futily attempting to assist these players when they are cheated by unsecure transactions.

    I donno what EQ2's policies are towards item buying/selling in the EULA, but in FFXI if you buy/sell an item for real money through a 3rd party system and you get scammed, you're basicly screwed. So why can't SOE simply follow this same policy? Why go through the hassle of trying to deal with it even though they've tried before (*cough*EQ1*coug

  • Competition is Good (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Staats ( 877154 ) on Saturday April 23, 2005 @02:45AM (#12320991)
    The more I think about this, the more it makes sense for Sony to do it.

    Think about it - these games cost ten to fifteen bucks a month. Most people are only willing to pay for one of these a month, the diehard maybe two or three. Thus, only one MMO is being paid for per person per month (and only those willing to pay 10 to fifteen play)... and if one steals everyone's thunder (WoW) then everybody else doesn't even a chance.

    However, if you could lower the cost without lowering the quality, more people will have multiple MMOs installed. I'm not just talking about brokering deals (though this has the added benefit of lessening the time a person has to spend in a given MMO to make it worthwhile, which is also good for this purpose) but the inclusion of ads, etc.

    Point being, if people can play more than one MMO at a time (and if people like me can use the hours they spend at work to give them a shot of playing at a level close to their friends), this will almost certainly raise the number of MMOs the market can support - and I think competition will certainly improve the product.

  • Power to the casual gamer! (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Squiggle ( 8721 ) on Saturday April 23, 2005 @02:52AM (#12321016)
    I think this is a good thing.

    MMORPGs have generally catered to the time-rich. The eBay and other markets sprung up as the time-poor (but money-rich) struggled for fair treatment. Anyone complaining about buying and selling of items is usually time-rich and enjoys the advantages they have playing a game designed for the time-rich. Most of them believe you have to "earn" your character, paying in labour far beyond the price you paid for the game and the monthly fees. They must be the sort of customers accountants dream of. :)

    The MMORPG industry is filled with exploitive businesses producing badly designed games that are inherently discriminatory based on the amount of time commitment players can make to them. This isn't about how much practice a player puts in, but giving their avatar/character advantages based on time invested. Skill becomes a secondary factor, slave to the monthly fee driven treadmill. I suppose for non-competitive MMORPGs, whatever floats your boat, but for games involving PvP this makes casual gamers into second class gamers.

    Thankfully, companies like ArenaNet are producing games like Guild Wars that are starting to make positive changes.

    The more these games can start focusing on role-playing and meaningful interactions (including competition) between players and less about time-based character development the better. Item markets like SOE's are a step down a sidepath, but I'm happy to see anything that allow more types of gamers, not just the time-rich, get their gaming fix. In the end, the industry will greatly profit from making MMORPG games more accessible and fair - and so they should.
    • You've come to the conclusion that a particular game is a treadmill that rewards time spent playing over all other considerations... ...so you spend even more money on it, on top of the subscription fee, in order to get to the part of the game you actually want to play, ie the part that isn't such a treadmill. In response to all those dollars, the MMO market is flooded with treadmills....exactly the sort of game you obviously don't want to play.

      Anyway, in a PvE game like Everquest, your buying the chance
  • Comment removed based on user account deletion
    • I think you mean EARN money, not win. Buying and selling items for your character is the whole foundation of Project Entropia. [project-entropia.com]
      • But when a random number generator decides whether you get the really valueable weapon you can sell for $50 or some piece of crap loot, or a couple gold pieces, that IS gambling.

        You're playing the equivalent of craps.
    • but that's been dealt with before too.. in the early days Magic was played for Ante... in other words you lost a random card from your deck if you lost a duel.... That didn't last long when Black Lotus started hitting $300... and local authorities tried to ban the game...

      I can't see how SOE is doing anything different...and again they're actually recieving compensation for the allowed "gambling" so that really gets messsy.

  • Napster was free. Industry didn't like it. Napster now charges. Same concept. People are going to do it whether you try to stop them or not. If you can't beat them, join them (and make money too).

  • free market... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by cahiha ( 873942 ) on Saturday April 23, 2005 @03:54AM (#12321271)
    It was your choice to subscribe to a commercial on-line gaming service. Presumably, you think you're getting something for your money. Well, your vendor made a business decision. If you don't like it, go somehwere else.

    Of course, you could get off your lazy butt and actually contribute to an open source MMOG; there are several existing ones and several new ones in the works.
  • Look guys. The reason why this is so controversial is because they're trading in virtual objects. Those objects are not real. They're nothing but records in a database. All a programmer has to do is push one button and the systems spawns about a hundred thousand rare artefacts or with one hack upgrade all the characters to level 1983710301E+23.

    That's the problem really. The value of an object is rated by how rare it is in the real world. Supply and demand. The virtual objects in the game are not real and c

    • That's the problem really. The value of an object is rated by how rare it is in the real world. Supply and demand. The virtual objects in the game are not real and can easily be modified or cloned.

      Ahem, global banking is mostly electronic these days. If you'll excuse the weak-ass pun, there's an awful lot of stock and trust placed in "records in a database" these days.
    • An awful lot of the pleasure in this world is virtual or at least ephemeral. You can also look around and see that there are a large number of people who enjoy doing things that you wouldn't do if they paid you to - the point being, just because you think it's a waste of money doesn't make it so, and it doesn't make those people who enjoy that sort of things idiots.

      I fail to see how paying to watch a movie is different to paying for a new sword in your favourite MMORPG; you haven't bought anything real. (L

  • Cherry picking the facts... (Score:4, Informative)

    by Attaturk ( 695988 ) on Saturday April 23, 2005 @05:39AM (#12321570) Homepage

    ... has been an anathema to them and remains so to just about every other MMORPG company in the industry.

    Umm, I can [roma-victor.com], think [project-entropia.com] of [there.com] several [secondlife.com] that [achaea.com] are quite happy to associate in-game goods/wealth with real world money. I'm too lazy to post all the links - google it up Mr Jacobs - you're missing some important market research. ;-)
    • Yeah, but how many people play those games? A few hundred? Maybe a few thousand? I wonder why they aren't very popular. Maybe they just suck, but maybe most people who are going to spend some time playing games actually want to play a game in which IRL rich people can't cheat their way through.

  • I think this is a good idea. Just like laws in real life, these rules in the game that you can't do certain things and will be punished if you do don't prevent everyone from doing it, and sometimes such rules cause more problems than they solve. So rather than create a kind of a black market on ebay by forbidding the real life trade, make a sanctioned site on which it can be done totally officially. That way SOE will have much more control over the situation. For example, they could limit the number of item

  • I take issue with the statement: (Score:3, Funny)

    by deanj ( 519759 ) on Saturday April 23, 2005 @09:03AM (#12322074)
    I take issue with the statement:

    "one of the worst decisions in the history of the MMORPG industry..."

    No, I believe that releasing Anarchy Online when they did was one of the worst decisions in the history of the MMORPG industry.

  • Get a clue, Mark (Score:4, Insightful)

    by petrus4 ( 213815 ) on Saturday April 23, 2005 @09:18AM (#12322121) Homepage Journal
    Auctioning of in-game stuff is something that players want, and have wanted, for years...to the point where they're going to do it irrespective of whether an MMORPG's parent company supports it or tries to stop them. By supporting it, SOE are being highly insightful and intelligent...and by taking a cut of the cheese from it, they're also doing something which I've advocated that such companies do for a long time, in order to create an incentive for themselves to do this. SOE should be applauded for this in the strongest possible terms, and most definitely NOT criticised for it. SOE will find that by doing this, not only will they notice a large boost in revenue, but they will enjoy an equivalent boost in positive public relations as well.

    This is a case of an entertainment company (SOE) actually supporting what their customers want, and existing in harmony with their customers, rather than trying to dictate every minute detail of what they're able to do, and suffering economically (and in other ways) as a result, which is the more normal form of behaviour.

    The customer is not the enemy, Mark. They're the person who pays your bills, and gives you a profit. If SOE have the vision and intelligence to be able to recognise this fact and utilise it in order to prosper from it, don't whine because them doing it makes you look bad because you're *not* doing it.
  • This kind of interests me, because it parallels the mostly liberal reaction to the war on drugs -- rather than wasting our time and resources tracking down these "outlaws", let's "legalize what they're doing," "regulate what they're doing," and "take our cut of what they're doing." and watch all the related problems goes away.

    The nice thing about this situation is that (and, granted the criticism is coming from a competitor, so the mileage may vary,) somebody is standing up and saying "there will be unintended consequences of this, and here's a few of them." Now if only someone would do that on the "legalize drugs" front so we can finalize realize how stupid that idea is, too.

  • Make leveling a positive experience (Score:5, Insightful)

    by kongjie ( 639414 ) <kongjie@ma c . com> on Saturday April 23, 2005 @12:00PM (#12322892)
    Disclosure statement: I hate SOE for making Mac players eat the leftover crumbs off a very cold plate. That being said...

    The statement I find most damning by SOE's Smedley is this one:

    It is clear to us that we have many loyal and honest players who simply don't have the time to take multiple characters through the game's higher levels of play and want a sanctioned, secure means to broaden their play experience.
    Look, if you made those levels and the time spent attaining them worthwhile, instead of just grinding, then "loyal and honest" players would want to experience them.

    In my mind, the IGE-type solution sucks because

    • It encourages farmers, and a true farmer is not someone experiencing game for the entertainment value that most players are. That creates imbalances in the game universe.
    • It betrays a deficiency in gameplay. It creates the equation paying for weapon X is more desirable then spending Y amount of time attaining it. This is because, in the case of SOE, you're more than likely required to grind to obtain weapon X, senseless and boring.
    Make the game only a game. Don't allow people to buy their way through it.

    Either improve gameplay or accept that some people are not going to be willing to expend hundreds of hours in mindless grinding. I think the real problem is that SOE is not willing to lose customers who aren't happy with gameplay, and they think that by allowing said customers to buy content, they'll keep them in the fold.

    • Look, if you made those levels and the time spent attaining them worthwhile, instead of just grinding, then "loyal and honest" players would want to experience them.

      This is so true. Grinding is what I have always though of as a design flaw in MMORPGs. And now that the game producers have found a way to make money off of this design flaw, if this succeeds, it will be a long time before anyone moves the genre forwards.

    • Grinding has always been in the mind of the player. If you want to get to a different level and go somewhere else then what is currently available to your character then you have to grind in order to get that.
      At level 40 in EQ2 I don't feel I have ever had to grind to advance my character, something I felt I had to do in WoW to advoid ganking. I have always had huge amounts of quests for both solo and groups and can easily solo for decent exp.
      The biggest problem has been I have far to many quests I wan
  • awww, poor game character and item auctioning folks won't be able to charge illegal activity surcharges now :( Let's all feel sorry for them and join in the collective whine. 'They took oer jeeerbs!!!'.
  • This is why legalization of some drugs, like Majuana, will never happen in the US. One State might try, but because it steps on the financial toes of another, they will be stopped. Sony is trying something new. If others are making profit, Sony should too.
    • WTF are you smoking, dude? We're talking about video games, nothing illegal here. Try posting when you're not high, you might be more coherent.
      • Since you either didn't read my whole post, or your comprehension skills are low, I will explain it in a simple manner. I am talking about how when one person breaks the norm for the first time, especially when it brings a profit that others will not get, those left behind will try to stop them. This is what is happening here. All companies could do this. Sony is the first. The other companies like Turbine wish they did it, but instead of going back on their word, they choose to attack Sony instead, ev

  • Because obviously... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Moo Moo Cow of Death ( 778623 ) on Saturday April 23, 2005 @06:31PM (#12325179) Journal
    I think Mythic has missed the ball here and is trying to make up for not doing it first honestly. It's sheer idiocy to think that the "black market", which has an estimated $300-$800 million dollar market, would just dissappear if you said you didn't like it long enough. You could of course, ban accounts, say it's bad, and continue to put forth 40% of your technical force into solving claims of "missing items", "stolen accounts" and "bugged quests"...

    OR you could come into the little world I like to call "reality" and eliminate those problems by offering a service that is so automated and straight forward its a money making MACHINE.

    Let's look at the alternatives shall we?

    40% technical support put toward account/item stealing asshats that don't really tell you what the problem is...or

    Put forth minimal effort after initial work (auction site) is up and running and profit...

    The ONLY thing that would effectively stop these so called "black market" auctions would be to have NO trading in your game whatsoever and to not allow a credit card to change on the said account unless there was voice and social security number checking.

    It was inevitable one way or the other.

  • Hey Sony, why just just skip to the next step? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by nunchux ( 869574 ) on Saturday April 23, 2005 @06:53PM (#12325324)
    Why go through all of the bother of brokering auctions? Just create an in-game store that takes real-life cash for ultra-rare artifacts. Make it so we can buy experience points and skills, too. I'm tired of being lvl 1 every time I start a new character, I want him to be godlike and I want it now. Everquest 3 should have one central location, let's call it "The Mall." You go to the mall and outfit your character with as much cool stuff as you can afford. Then you go next door to "The Gym" and max out all of your skills and stats. Now you have a legendary hero who can go kick the ass of every monster in the realm without fear (not that you had to fear anyway, because there's no permadeath.)

    In fact, let's do away with all that adventuring and killing monsters and digging through dungeons crap all together. It just takes way too much time. I want a game where you all you do is buy stuff and then strut around town showing it off.
  • It's because the entire point of a virtual world, or at least with these game-oriented fantasy ones (not things like Second Life), is to provide its users with a pretend reality that's supposedly separate from the real one.

    It's true that people with more time to spend on the world tend to advance faster than those who don't, and that's a real-world concern. That's a flaw in these designs, and not a strength. Outright selling the items just intensifies the flaw.

    People don't play things like Everquest so
    • Argh, I could have explained that a little better. Let me correct myself before one of you gents does it for me.

      Gigantic disparities of wealth? They may or may not be unavoidable in a virtual world. What is more likely to be avoidable is people transferring their real-world wealth into the virtual setting.

      That's what I'm right about. That's what I'm hooray about.
  • 1. Mark is the kind of guy who is not afraid to say what he thinks. He honestly doesn't believe embracing the exchange of in-game goods for real money is good for the industry and for the games themselves. That's his honest opinion and there are certainly many others who feel the same way. 2. Mark is also a shrewd businessman. He understands that, now to SOE has taken the move, if he genuinely doesn't agree with it, then he should not simply say nothing. He should get Mythic's own take on the issue out
  • 1. Mark is the kind of guy who is not afraid to say what he thinks. He honestly doesn't believe embracing the exchange of in-game goods for real money is good for the industry and for the games themselves. That's his honest opinion and there are certainly many others who feel the same way.

    2. Mark is also a shrewd businessman. He understands that, now to SOE has taken the move, if he genuinely doesn't agree with it, then he should not simply say nothing. He should get Mythic's own take on the issue out in t
  • I wonder how long it will take for governments to get in on the action? After all, if you're selling something for real-world dollars, then a local jurisdiction can tax it.

    Where are the servers located? :-)

    -Jeff
    • EQ2 servers are located in san deigo, CA and in Virginia. In addition to the various international sites, but I doubt that they will be putting one of theses new types of servers there.
      For billing and tax purposes they are in CA. For example on how taxes are handled look at ebay, since that is all this system is going to be like.

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