Unmaking The Game 239
Teknogeek writes "Player2Player has just posted an interesting article concerning the massive amounts of platinum being sold on sites like PlayerAuctions, and how it might have been obtained. Quite an interesting read, to be sure!" This is in Everquest, BTW.
Slow Day (Score:5, Funny)
Speaking of which, does anyone have any mod points for sale? :)
Re:Slow Day (Score:5, Insightful)
Move along, nothing to see here.
Re:Slow Day (Score:5, Interesting)
EQ money is just a few steps away from some real nice auctions.
Who cares if a football player's taking steroids.. (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't play EQ, but it seems a lot of people do, and if people are cheating to spoil the game it's of interest.
Re:Who cares if a football player's taking steroid (Score:4, Insightful)
1) Verant should step up and fix what is wrong
or
2) Stop paying Verant $12.95 a month and go play one of the other 4 or 5 OnLine roleplaying games.
You do have a choice.
Re:Who cares if a football player's taking steroid (Score:5, Informative)
I played Diablo2 for quite some time, and I watched for two years as Blizzard would constantly fix bugs that allowed item duplication ("duping") and various other cheats. Without exception after every fix, within a week, I became aware of a new method of duping (I didn't engage in it, but I knew people who did). I don't know what version Diablo2 is currently in, so I can't say this applies at the moment. My point is, as soon as they fix one bug, another will surface.
2) Stop paying Verant $12.95 a month and go play one of the other 4 or 5 OnLine roleplaying games.
And lose all invested time spent building up a character in EQ? Not to mention every one of those other games will suffer from similar bugs. In First Person Shooters it's wall-hacks and aimbots, in map-driven information warfare games (AKA "fog of war") it's map-hacks, in resource management games it's resource duplication, in economy based games (Diablo2 multiplayer, EQ, UO, and a host of others) it's currency counterfeiting.
There are a number of complex problems behind each of these cheats but they all boil down to basically the same thing: a combination of finite trusted resources and the untrusted client problem, there aren't enough trusted resources to do all the calculations, so some must be shifted over to untrusted resources, the puzzle is to choose which calculations will allow the least severe and lowest number of cheats, taking into account the amount of trusted and untrusted resources available. I have yet to hear of any game with a significant number of players and no cheats/bugs, granted though, some have fewer than others.
You do have a choice.
Yes, that choice is to play with the cheaters, or not at all.
Re:Who cares if a football player's taking steroid (Score:3, Insightful)
I'll bet you don't eat, either....a few hours after one meal, you just have to eat another. =)
Software development is an ITERATIVE process. If a bug is discovered a year after a product comes out, it obviously hasn't affected a whole lot of people...but it's fixed anyway, because clearly people have begun to exercise the software in a fashion that has caused the bug to be exposed. There's something comparable to a learning curve with any software product. Some features are widely used immediately, some take a while to enter widespread usage. Until there's a good-sized userbase for a feature, usable bug reports don't come in for the feature. Once the bug reports start rolling in, the feature is obviously being used (or misused). Failing to fix the bug means that further development for that aspect of the software is halted; users don't use the feature (since it doesn't work), they don't suggest ways to expand it, they don't exercise the features "beyond" the feature, etc.
Re:Who cares if a football player's taking steroid (Score:4, Insightful)
At this point, it has obviously stopped being a game, and have become an investment. Then, ask yourself: What is the expected return on that investment.
I'm not saying that I don't understand. I do! I have played a few Muds, and when I stopped playing one, there was always the feeling of "losing the investment".
At that point, it needed to be reminded that I play games to have fun. Whenever I began playing a game for other reasons than fun, it would no longer be a game (or fun, ofcourse).
I still haven't been able to find one single reason for playing Diablo 2 on Realms. I always played alone or with a few friends, so we could just host the game ourselves. Especially after single player games could be set to simulate more people in the game, Realms were pointless and laggy. So, there went my invested time again, but it was an investment with no chance of ever giving a return.
Morale (and I have to keep telling this to myself, because it is obviosuly quite counter to my nature): F**k the "investment"! I played because I had fun playing! The playing was the reward!
Re:Who cares if a football player's taking steroid (Score:3, Informative)
> and various other cheats. Without exception after every fix, within a week, I became aware of a new method of duping
Same thing here really, but there's 3 reasons diablo2 had this problem in the worst way:
1) Items was allowed to be sold on ebay, making copying them a lucritive effort
2) Programming-wise, blizzards code is amazingly naive and stupid. For example, up until the expansion pack, items didn't have unique id numbers, so there was no way to tell if a item was a dupe or not. Some of the methods here was just so
easy, my best one duped 40-50 sojs in 4-5 seconds.
3) No punishment: Only recently have blizzard begun banning accounts, and up until then, people had no penalty whatsoever for hacking the game and trying whatever trick there is.
#2 is probably very important, as a software engineer, I have NO respect whatsoever for blizzards production code, some of it is just embarrasing.
Re:Who cares if a football player's taking steroid (Score:3, Insightful)
There are a number of complex problems behind each of these cheats...
Much as there are complex problems with real life "cheats". The problem is that some folks will game the system if there's a payoff, no matter what the system actually is. The funny bit about game cheats is that the software company controls the "reality" within the game, and in spite of that they still can't lock everything down.
This sort of thing is never going to go away. The "trusted client" problem isn't just a virtual one. Every day each of us has to trust that those around them are obeying the rules. When that trust is violated, it's called "crime". And if we had an answer to that... *resigned chuckle*
Re:Slow Day (Score:5, Informative)
Moreover, this has implications for Your Rights- EULAs and network access regulations may be defined based on this. Sony creates a game and charges for the priviledge of using it- and the most popular use consists of trying to acquire goodies (which are fungible with platinum pieces) as rapidly as possible. Most gamers try to optimize their income of PP/hour (even if they don't conciously think of it like that).
But what happens when someone (like these guys) apparently discover the optimal way to earn PP? Its likely that if they spread it around, the Everquest economy will get boring. Earning will be too easy, and players will log off and lapse their $10/monthly subscriptions. Sony would lose million$.
What can they do about it? Change the game would be the best solution, but it would become a constant struggle against the PP earning optimizers. Corporations are allergic to that kind of indefinite R&D expenditure- they'd rather pay $9/hr network jerks to keep the servers running, not $30/hr software developers to perpetually modify the code.
Instead, they might try to label the optimizers as "hackers" who are subverting their system. They'll start by revoking these player's accounts, and no one likes to be banned for just doing their best. Even worse, there's the outside possibility that if digital intrusion laws get a little more draconian, they could try to have some of these users prosecuted for their lost potential revenue. (Publizing a "hack" which renders the game unplayable could cost Sony days worth of revenue by "denying" them their servers until it gets fixed. Costing other online companies (such as Ebay) a few days of income by denying their service has gotten people tossed in jail.)
Scary to imagine that someday a person could be incarcerated for cheating at a game about elf-girls killing lizardmen.
PS. When I hit google to fact-check my response, the paid ad that popped up offered me platinum cheap [eqnetgaming.com]!
Re:Slow Day (Score:3, Insightful)
They've been banning accounts for using 3rd party for some time- ShowEQ, a packet sniffer, is hard for them to detect if done right, but if they can tell you're using it they actively ban accounts. They've been doing this for a while, at least a year. There's a grey area program that allows EQ to be played in a window which they haven't been enforcing a ban for- but it encourages people to pay for and play multiple accounts. There have been item and platinum duplication schemes discovered in the past, some of which have resulted in bans.
This is somewhat different, as the characters are doing legal actions in game, they're just doing them without the effort of actually clicking from the keyboard, and likely doing them faster than that. Still, it's yet another action covered by the 3rd party software ban, and from the MOTD they may have figured out how to detect it. Once the method like this gets out to the general public they have in the past always figured out a way to shut it down.
Re:*sigh*, morons... qjkx (Score:3, Interesting)
If someone is exploiting the monetary system (and they have for some time) then Verant should step up and fix the problem. However, please don't figure on that happening for at least 6 months. It took Verant 6 months to address the issue of ManaBurn and the affect it had on the "game" and Planes of Power is due for release next week (and with EVERY new release there are several new and fun issues to deal with, not the least of which a day or two of downtime).
Bottom line, it is just a GAME. And because it is just a GAME, you have choices. There are numerous other online roleplaying games (albeit they do not have the population like EQ) people can enjoy (and exploit!).
Scary (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Scary (Score:5, Funny)
- The submitter didn't even realize that there are people in the world who don't play EQ who might not have understood the reference
=or=
- That the editor had to clue us in, as if we wouldn't have figured out that the submitter is a loser.
Re:Scary (Score:2)
*phew*
Re:Scary (Score:2)
Bet you $100 (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Bet you $100 (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Bet you $100 (Score:2, Funny)
/.'ed already? (Score:5, Funny)
Loading? No one really knows..
Wow, weak server. (Score:4, Informative)
Recently, someone posted on the P2P forums about how macros are affecting EQ. This got me to thinking that maybe he was a troll. He was claiming that 3 million PP per day, per server is dumped into the economy that is not earned through entirely legitimate means.
I decided to start by checking www.playerauctions.com, and found out that on my home server right now, over 3,500K pp is for sale. Currently. That's right, it's about 3 million, 675 thousand platinum for sale. Think about that figure for a minute. That is one server, and that's only the PP that is for sale. Imagine what is NOT for sale and then tell me that 3 million PP per day per server could not easily be dumped into the game?
Next, I wanted to check the availability of said macro program, to see if in fact a person COULD as easily acquire "free PP" as the poster made it sound. I went to Yahoo and started fishing around, and came up to a lot of sites that offered the "free" macro program along with their guide at the low cost of 20 bucks. I'm sure that, if I was willing to be a bit more in depth, I would find the program itself. But how many are willing to do that?
What I did find was this site, and I am going to use it as a reference for the remainder of my article: http://www.eqtotalsecrets.com/. Not to act as a pusher, but I found this in 5 seconds. For 20 dollars I could buy this, make the money, and sell PP at half the normal cost. I would make my money back in maybe 2 hours. So yes, the program, for 20 dollars, is easily found.
So now we have checked our facts and found out that the EQ macro program IS in fact possible. We have found out that it is entirely possible that 3 million PP per day is being made per server. Now that we have our information, lets look at the effects of said facts.
First, each server averages 10k+ accounts. If you figure on any day 3K people play per server, each person plays for 4 hours a day, and the average level is 40, you can make a make a guess that each account makes 200pp per hour. This is figuring in the 500+pp per hour from Hill Giants and the no PP per hour you make in certain zones. When a newbie makes 10pp an hour and a level 60 makes 500+, the average is not that great. This is a conservative but fairly accurate guess, considering that the normal 60 can pull in about 1k an hour if he wants to. This is simply figuring in PP coming INTO the economy, not PP trading between players. So you subtract the PP coming from rezzes, spells, item trades, MQs, and so on and it's not all that much. Now you add the totals up and you come to 2.4 million PP. That's my guess at the created PP per day per server, but for the sake of argument lets say I low-balled it and 3 million a day is created, on average.
Now lets do some rough fact checking against EQTotalSecrets. At level 40, they claim you can make 950pp an hour. So 950pp with 4 hours put in a day. That comes to 3800pp a day. If the person doing this is the average player, that is. Let's assume for a moment, though, that the average person is not doing this, and it's mostly the higher-ups. According to this site you can net 4500 PP per hour. Now being fair...at level 50, let's say...I could make 3000pp an hour (using this guide), which comes to 12,000pp a play session. That's not too shabby, to say the least. That's 60,000 pp a week, and then its 3 million PP a month!
This is going to screw the economy up! ROYALLY! That's all there is to it. One person is going to introduce enough PP into the economy to create ripples, but 100 people a server can seriously do A LOT of damage in a short time. I am not an economist, but if one person in a month can create as much as the ENTIRE economy can in a day, there is going to be huge, post WWI-like German inflation. Useful things will skyrocket in cost, making it virtually impossible for the relative neophyte to attain them in a reasonable amount of time, and things that are no longer deemed useful will be destroyed, or sold for next to nothing at all. A prime example of this is that famous haste item, the Flowing Black Silk Sash. It used to cost, at the lowest, 10k. Now it runs (on my server, at least) 25k. Then, there is the Brown Chitin Protector, once among the finest of druid chest armor. It used to cost 5k. Now it costs 50pp. This is what I would call a major depression, and without an outflow of money, we will continue to see the cost of goods rise, and there is no end in sight. Without a clear, well-defined money sink, you cannot have a stable economy. They implemented the horses then added innate run speed, making the horses a pretty pony with no real use to most people. It's like the Pyreal from AC: it got hit hard by the dupe bug, and now has little to no actual value in the game. People might be willing to trade for C-notes, or whatever other form of currency the game has created, such as the shards and all them, but the pyreal itself is almost valueless.
Now many of you are asking how easy this bug REALLY is to exploit. Well first off, its not a bug. That's part of the problem. There is no bug. I will explain this to you as I understand it. Mind you, I found this at 2amwhile working on my trade skills in EQ. I did NOT go out there looking for this bug, and I would never have noticed it if not for the fact that another PC, a blacksmith, pointed it out. I am a tailor who needs studs and bonings made occasionally. After a great degree of testing we found that with only a 75 skill in smithing, this man was able to make 5pp7gp into 7pp1gp6sp1cp. Now this is a good thing, it gives smiths a way to make PROFIT! No normal player has the 100k+ laying around to up their smithing to 200+! I am sure that boning's are the same way, with a higher degree of profit. One PC without a macro program did all this in about 7 minutes and 30 seconds. I am sure you could stream line the process down to 6 minutes, and if you had a macro program, well, 1 minute. 1 minute, 2 pp. I am adding a few gold in there because his faction with the merchants of shadow haven was apprehensive, even though his charisma was 137. This guy had been playing EQ for a month only, and still he was quickly able to do the math on this and figure it out. So, that's 60pp per hour, if you macro it, which is not much. Unless there are larger degrees of this, which there no doubt are!
Verant was probably trying to give new smiths a leg up with a way to profit. Perhaps the other trade skills have similar things, slight profit margin items built in. The problem was that it took one guy to write the code on how to exploit this, and they are going to ruin it for the rest of us. Verant actually tries to make trade skills better, and PEOPLE screw it up!
DAoC was smart, and made trade skills cost money, rather then the majority of the EQ system. EQ has little to know expenses in it, it's mostly what you can hunt up. DAoC has huge out-going expenditures, relative to the other games in its genre, because all of the best stuff is crafted, and crafted items take materials paid for, rather then materials gathered through assassinating monsters. I doubt the EQ dev team ever thought that so much money would be pumped into their system via artificial means, and they never thought it would happen on such a grand scale. I will NOT roast Verant or SoE for this mistake; instead, I am going to leave the blame up to you. I wanted to give you some information to work with, and some facts to draw from. I have made a few observations, and hopefully given you all enough to work with. Personally, though, let me direct your hatred to the players using this. They have decided to screw you over, and for good reason: 3 million PP a month, going for about 20USD per 10kpp. Actually the going rate for PP is 40USD a month, but if you only sell half of it, then you're only going to make 20USD. Only about half of the PP for sale sells. So 3million goes into 10,000 300 times. 300 times 20 is 6000. 6 grand, USD. That's cold, hard American money. That's the motivation, that's the reasoning. Money does not talk, it whispers seductively into your ear promising you everything you have ever wanted. It is the ultimate woman. The second you have a little, you want more, the second you have a little more, you want a lot. These people decided that 6000 dollars a month PER account was worth more to them than playing Everquest. Now, if I offered you 12 grand a month to macro on two computers in a game, even though you might be banned, would you?
Re:Wow, weak server. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Wow, weak server. (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Wow, weak server. (Score:2)
Re:Wow, weak server. (Score:5, Funny)
Does it smell anything like scandal? 'Cause we all know what scandal smells like, you know.
Re:Wow, weak server. (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Wow, weak server. (Score:2)
I think the poster meant to type "candles". Mmmm...sweet apple cinnamon scented ones.
Re:Wow, weak server. (Score:2, Interesting)
Translation wanted (Score:5, Funny)
Could somebody please translate the text above into some commonly spoken language. I have tried babelfish [altavista.com] but it did not work. The 'Fungi Tunic' part is especially confusing - and frankly the explanation that they are 'lore' did not help me much.
Tor
Re:Translation wanted -- From a recovering EQ'er (Score:5, Informative)
Velious is an EQ expansion pack. Each time Sony develops another part of the EQ world, they charge everybody $39.95 for the expansion pack, in addition to the $9.89 monthly fee. Think of it as add-on pack.
Lower Guk is the name of a zone. The EQ world is divided into zones. This cuts down on network traffic and server crashes. If everyone piled into the same zone, imagine the network traffic from updates, and people sending broadcast messages called "shouts" constantly. Velious added more "zones" to the EQ world.
The "fugi camp" is where a certain MOB (in game monster or creature) spawns (appears). Some MOB's are very rare and only occur once every two weeks or so. I think it's probability based. Anyway, if you want a particular item and don't want to spend all your hard earned cash, you have to wait and wait and wait and wait. When it finally spawns you and your buddies kill it and hope it has the item. In this case the item is a "fungi tunic" which I believe has regenerative powers. That means it heals you when you get beat up in battle. The word "lore" means that you can only have one in your possession at a time. In the U.S. a wife can be considered a "lore" item, since you can only have one. This is an attempt to keep the hardcore players from harvesting all the good items. The theory is once they get their "Fungi Tunic" they'll go try to get something else, since they can only have one.
The guys in this post weren't interested in the tunic for themselves, they just wanted to get them and sell them for the PP (platinumn) which is the form of currency used in EQ.
If you need to know anything else, let me know.. I had to quit, it was runing my life. The game is highly addictive and the longer you play the harder it is to make any progress. If you are a person who like to "WIN" video games, don't ever start playing EQ, it's IMPOSSIBLE!!!!!
The game has ruined many a marriage and cost many a geek their job. It is worse than crack.
Re:Translation wanted -- From a recovering EQ'er (Score:2)
Maybe they need to put a "CAUTION: Do not play this game under the influence of crack!" warning?
Re:Translation wanted (Score:5, Funny)
Here is the clarified version:
While approximately 3 or 4 months over, if Velious came out, have I a group of five friends had that I would go to that mycètes tents in the niedrigereren guk (to âm nearly always was he uncamped) once or twice one week. We are ' up to us remained had everything that mycètes tunic (they are truck) or the school began. Thus we made everyone at plate ~60k-90k per week starting from 3-4 o'clock play, which alot than this 60,000pp in week with the constant play is simpler.
Re:Translation wanted (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Translation wanted (Score:2)
Actual self-described "RPG players" would be insulted by the way you lump them together with CRPGs like that.
(True, you could argue that the non-computerized form should be now be called a PRPG, since Evercrack & FinalFantasy have become so overwhelmingly popular. But automatic transmissions are in 90% of new cars, and yet they're not the standard)
Re:Wow, weak server. (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Wow, weak server. (Score:4, Funny)
So Everquest ripped this model from the U.S. Government! Are they paying royalties?
Re:Wow, weak server. (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Wow, weak server. (Score:3, Funny)
I am sure that boning's are the same way, with a higher degree of profit. One PC without a macro program did all this in about 7 minutes and 30 seconds. I am sure you could stream line the process down to 6 minutes, and if you had a macro program, well, 1 minute. 1 minute, 2 pp. I am adding a few gold in there because his faction with the merchants of shadow haven was apprehensive, even though his charisma was 137.
I'm sorry, but this is the dorkiest thing I've ever read, including the old startrek.tech newsgroup on USENET.
Re:Wow, weak server. (Score:5, Insightful)
I mean, the whole thing reads like this: "I read that you could make a lot of money with macros. I found a place that claimed it would sell me a macro to make money for $20. I have not purchased the macro. If I looked, I may have been able to find macros for free on the net, but I didn't. I have not used the macros. I have never seen the macros. I have no idea what the macros do, and I can't even really guess. So now we have checked our facts and found out that the EQ macro program IS in fact possible." Huh?
Or, my favorite is this: "... which comes to 12,000pp a play session
Frankly, I have no idea what is going on in EverQuest. And, I have no idea what is happening to the economy in EverQuest. But, I didn't write a hysterical story about it and submit it to Slashdot, either.
Re:Wow, weak server. (Score:2)
The sad thing is it takes a while to see this. Camping, levelling and watching the exp bar slowly inch upwards are addictive for some inexplicable reason. I'm glad Verant helped me snap out of it by upping their prices and dumping all over their players with the botched Shadows of Luclin release.
Re:Wow, weak server. (Score:3, Informative)
Just as addictive, but fully automated.
Re:Wow, weak server. (Score:5, Funny)
"So.. you're making alot of platinum?"
"Yes.."
"And it's not yours?"
"Well.. it becomes ours."
"Tell me again how that's not stealing?"
"I don't think I'm explaining this very well."
Re:Wow, weak server. (Score:2)
Tim
Bling Bling (Score:5, Funny)
I wish the Everquest world had a white collar prison.
Actually, no. I don't even care that much.
When I played.. (Score:4, Interesting)
The Economics of RPGs (Score:5, Informative)
The author says, "Players - in contravention of the game's rules - also trade in EverQuest paraphernalia and characters offline. The online auction Web site, eBay, is flooded with them and people pay real money - sometimes up to a thousand dollars - for avatars and their possessions. Auxiliary and surrogate industries sprang around EverQuest and its ilk. There are, for instance, "macroing" programs that emulate the actions of a real-life player - a no-no."
Re:The Economics of RPGs (Score:2)
Re:The Economics of RPGs (Score:5, Funny)
And _nobody_ has ever woken up in real life and realized their assets were worthless and they'd wasted years of their life.
Re:The Economics of RPGs (Score:2)
I got to level 17 in EQ and came to the realization that I could go all the way to level 60, but at what price? I didn't want to look back when I'm old and gray and kick myself for wasting my youth behind a keyboard for something that adds up to a few bytes of info.
I think it was best said in Braveheart:
"Every man dies; not every man really lives."
Re:The Economics of RPGs (Score:4, Insightful)
One man works 80 hours a week, amasses a fortune, retires at 70 with more money than he knows what to do with. He's on his third wife, has several kids he doesn't recognize (but put through college), and a yacht that could sink an iceberg.
Another man works 40 hours a week, makes a living, retires at 70 with just enough money to maintain his household. He has a loving wife, several kids (that put themselves through college), and a 1997 Buick with 70k miles on it.
Yet another man works just enough to eat and buys clothes. He followed the Greatful Dead for ten years selling buttons and T-shirts. He's 70 now, living in a little shack on some land owned by one of his buddies from "back in the day". No wife, probably lots of kids, and he has a 1965 Chevy pickup with more miles on it than there are roads in the county he lives in.
Whos to say which one of them wasted their life?
Re:The Economics of RPGs (Score:5, Funny)
Man, am I glad I quit playing EQ and got two jobs so I could buy up all that Nortel stock. Now I... aww dammit.
Re:The Economics of RPGs (Score:2)
I am glad I only played for 4-5 months of everquest beta beore I realized what was going on with my life. It's short, and in my opinion no better than sitting mindlessly behind a TV and wasting your life away. Now that my wife and I have a 2 month old baby, the urgency of spending more quality time with loved ones and self/family improving activity is more impressionable to me.
Re:The Economics of RPGs (Score:2)
I think it's the biggest waste of time actually.
Re:The Economics of RPGs (Score:2)
Sorry buddy, having fun is not wasting your life.
Platinum pricing (Score:5, Funny)
plat is plentiful (Score:5, Interesting)
So FYI, it is not hard to amass 3 million plat over an entire server. You don't need some NON-exsistent exploit to do it.
Re:plat is plentiful (Score:2)
Re:plat is plentiful (Score:2)
They sound stylish, what do they do?
Re:plat is plentiful (Score:2)
The Manastone is an item that no longer drops in the game that allowed you to sacrifice health for mana..but if you had healing spells you could quickly fill up both health and mana, making you more or less a walking god.
Re:plat is plentiful (Score:2, Interesting)
The EQ Economy (Score:5, Interesting)
Market saturation and subsequent boredom of players I think has to be two reasons that Verant keeps releasing expansions. If you don't give people new and exciting things to do they will get tired and quit. There are drops now that are so rare and that so few guilds can obtain that the same power structures are maintained. By this I mean basically that the mass of goodies have shifted down with newer sweeter pieces filling the top. EQ has changed A LOT from its inception, but this isn't a necessarily bad thing. I know people that pay rent and make good money playing. Of course they don't do much of else though. EQ can become a JOB, and it's everyone choice whether to do so.
So if you are quit bitching. So what, something that cost you a bunch of pp a month ago you can't sell for chicken scraps now. You still used it and there is always ways to make the money back. Let's not forget also that this is a GAME. For most of us who play(ed), we did it for the fun not the RL cash.
According to my calculations... (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:According to my calculations... (Score:2)
Re:According to my calculations... (Score:3, Informative)
The fact is ALL currency is worthless these days. Forgery back in the day was the same as trying to sell fool's gold as the real deal.
You are free to use WHATEVER you want as a bargaining chip. Casino's actually USE bargaining chips. They are good ONLY in the casino. If you and I decide to agree upon chickens as the means of exchange between us thats fine. Every time I want 20 widgets from you, I will give you 20 chickens. Its completely legit. Its ONLY between us.
It is situations like this where the letter of the law is not necessarily the best indicator of the truth. However, a quick search on Lexis-Nexis would help you realize there prosecutions revolving around conterfeiting charges did not deal with anything other than someone making cold hard cash. You can barter with whatever you wish. quid pro quo is the name of the game.
Also, constitutional prohibitions against anyone other than the US government making currency was to prevent states from minting their own coinage, and to diminish the use of spanish pieces of eight. Thats a whole other story however.
Re:According to my calculations... (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:According to my calculations... (Score:2)
The Everquest economy will go bust in ~2 years
How do I take a short position?
People make their living through this (Score:5, Funny)
So do quake players purchase "wall hacks" and the like? I think it was hilarious if I saw a elementary school kid pushing netgame cheats on his friends:
"Dude, you better step up with the cash or you are just going to keep getting fragged. Nobody likes people who suck, man. I've got something that works so good you won't even have to be in the same room. Come on, just try it, just once. And shit, go buy some Jordans, your shoes suck!".
Jeez louise, the world changes, but people stay exactly the same...
Re:People make their living through this (Score:2)
Re:People make their living through this (Score:2)
Hmn. I checked the prices on playerauctions.com, and it seems platinum is worth about $100 per 50,000 pieces ($0.002 per platinum).
At this rate you'd need to sell about 1,000,000 platinum to make $2000 a month. You could probably make a living this way in many areas of the country.
Some of the "methods" being sold online claim you can make something like 2.5 million platinum in a month if you have a group of level 60 characters on your account. Theoretically, you could make $5000 a month (which will make a pretty decent living, esp. for a male with no dependents) off of EQ selling platinum, presuming these methods are correct.
That is a pretty big assumption, however. There seems to be no guarantee that these methods even work. If they did, why are these people with these great methods selling the methods rather than the plat?
I would hold making even 1,000,000 platinum ($2000) a month off of EQ a lofty goal, considering all things. And this really isn't money directly in your pocket.
Technically, you need to declare these earnings. IANA(Tax)L, but this money might even be seen as capital gains. I'm sure that most people who sell EQ platinum for money aren't declaring this. Though the chances are small, they might get nailed for tax evasion if the IRS finds out they are making an undeclared $2000-5000 a month.
Also, if more and more people begin to use these methods, platinum will theoretically drop in price at the auction sites, that coupled with the impending release of EQ2 (which won't allow people to bring their characters and wealth with them from EQ1) should drive the price of platinum down.
Additionally, most items in EQ technically last forever. An instance of a super powerful item will keep being created, but the earlier instances of the item will still be around.
Platinum should theoretically continue to lose value because of this over time.
If Verant really wants to foil people selling things they earn in the game, however, they need to "break" the economy from the start. Make money and levels easier to get and people won't go to auction sites. Though at the same time, it might also "break" the addictive nature of EQ.
Re:People make their living through this (Score:2, Interesting)
Your price estimate is a tad low, 50000pp generally goes for $150-$200. However, you are right about the prices dropping. 3 years ago 50000pp was worth $10000-$15000.
The problems are people who completely automate processes that actually produce platinum from nothing. The average income of people who do this for a living is approx $1000 per week. The peak is probably somewhere in the neighborhood of $20000 per week (16 PCs generating 2500pp per hour), and there are thousands more people who just do it on the side for small amounts of money.
There are only two kinds of games in which people wont resort to ebay/playerauctions to sell things. First, a game with no items or currency at all, and that just wont work. Second, a game in which the company itself conducts platinumdollars transactions, which is actually being tried with Project Entropia, a free game with no subscription fees, the only fees are a small % taken by Mind Ark any time you deposit or withdraw funds.
Re: Welcome to real life. (Score:2)
But the guy who sets up 10 machines to play automatically because he sees real life profit to be made by doing so is living in real life; he's making real money.
He's not doing it becuase he likes to play the video game; he's doing it because there is money to be made.
yes, things can theoretically be controlled. When you buy a new Cloak of Coolness or whatnot, you are not investing money; you know it is a virtual thing in an online video game that neither you nor the seller has ulimate control over; you are paying for the right to have that item tonight, and tomorrow. You are paying because you can. You are paying because you'd rather not spend the next year playing the game to MAYBE find one on your own. You are exchange a couple of entertainment bucks to someone else for a service they are providing for you.
The page cannot be displayed ... (Score:4, Funny)
The page you are looking for has been
Please try the following:
Click the Refresh button, or fuck off.
It is completely impossible to say anything intelligent or enlightening in a space this size, excep
Re:The page cannot be displayed ... (Score:2, Funny)
camaraderie?
MOD PARENT UP AND MOD ME DOWN (Score:3, Funny)
Fuzz6y that joke is worth it's wait in Platinum. (And i deliberately spelled that wrong for the rest of you.) w00t!
Dig it up? (Score:2)
Isn't that where platinum comes from, same as gold and silver?
So the question is... (Score:3, Funny)
Hacking EQ (Score:2, Funny)
On buying stuff in games. (Score:2, Interesting)
I don't see a reason to fight people legally who are selling things in a GAME.
Those who run the game can always change the rules to make the stuff worthless. Fix the bug and switch the main currency to acorns or something.. seriously.
I see this on Dibalo 2 all the time.. peopel whine about dupers. You know what? It doens't negatively affect your ability to play, I'm sorry.. all it does is add depth to the game. For many, it's become PART of the game.
Oh my god... (Score:3, Insightful)
I certainly hope that I am not the only person who get disturbed at the sight of something like this [playerauctions.com]... It's not my money though, but it's getting creepy how much money people are willing to pour into their alternate realities. I mean, sure I can imagine spending 1100 USD on an expensive hobby. AMD Athlon XPs didn't grow on trees when I bought this damned computer 4 months ago, so it cost me allot. Same thing for people who restore and drive around in old/antique cars, or people with modelling as a hobby. But for those hobbies you simply can't start from the ground up. I might be decent with computers, but I can't make one from a pile of iron ore, a mound of silicon and a book called "Assembler for dummies.". Neither can you expect the person who drives old cars to actually make his own car. To repair an old car perhaps. Modelling also requires some expensive starting materialss, especially if you build more ships/train tracks/airplanes/whatever you like to build. But a character on a game? Spend a couple of month of effort on it and you can get it from scratch, unlike other hobbies.
This silly "paying for $RANDOM_MMORPG chars/equipment" idea is getting out of hand and has long since crossed the line of Insanity. Then again, it's still not my money. :)
Errrr.... (Score:2, Funny)
Many inaccuracies in this article. (Score:5, Informative)
It does not take 100k to get to 200+ smithing. You could probably do it for around 5k. However it is time consuming to collect the items needed to get that high.
Flowing Black Silk Sash is one of a small handfull of common tradeable haste items. It's not that good anymore, as it is only 21% haste. About the time of Kunark, these things were not sellable as platinum had no real value. When I came into the market they were around 10k each. Over the last two years they have steadily fallen in price and are now at 2500pp each. For comparison, 30% haste items sell at around 25k and 40% haste items are around 70k. As you see, there is a steep curve between the gear that everyone wants and the gear that noone wants.
I believe the program that people are using for the trade skills macros is Macroquest, which can be found at macroquest.sourceforge.net as open source. It is potentially useful for those playing EQ with disabilities, or those playing bards. People are using them to do the positive income tradeskills over and over. The most common is to make arrows and sell them back to the vendor, which nets you around 1kpp an hour. Supposedly there are some others also, but I'd have to see them to believe that's going on.
Word is that Verant knows this is becoming common and is watching the known macro spots now for people hanging out. Expect tomorrow's patch to change the prices of the items such that they are no longer profitable as well.
Inflation... (Score:3, Insightful)
Why not introduce this bit of life into an Online Persistant world? These online games already have other real-life stuff. (marriages, divorces, etc).
This is a problem (Score:5, Interesting)
And this is effecting the economy. Items that used to not be sold are being sold but for prices unobtainable w/o the use of macroing. Items no longer go to the most worthy but to the people who macro or use the various other exploits which exist, (and which VI is aware of as they are of macroing). No longer is skill the determining factor but instead cheating.
But VI/SOE(Verant Interactive/Sony Online Entertainment) have given up on the game. They have an expansion due out next week and most conclusions are that it will be the last for Everquest. Everquest 2 is in development and has been for quite some time. While it is possible that the lack of response to the multiple exploits that have been divulged to VI/SOE is due to the cramming required to release a non-buggy expansion on time, (something the company is not known for), it is also possible that by allowing corruption of the economy along with the loss of customer service that has been identified recently VI/SOE is sinking it's own ship in the hopes that those on board will be forced to swim to one of its newer games, (at higher prices and even more 'alternate' - read pay for power - payment plans).
I am very disguisted with VI/SOE's treatment of it's players recently. Things that were 'against the Vision of the game' have been introduced to ring more cash out of the game. Things such as name changes and server transfers. The Fanfaires that used to be solely run to foster community in everquest are now run instead to make money for the company. I am part of the staff at one of the largest everquest message boards, (currently 37594 registered users). We have an active staff of 10, 9 of which are able to attend this FanFaire. We were originally told by the person in charge of Fanfaires that we would receive vendor badges for the Fanfaire for all our members free. We all made travel plans including a person flying from Germany and another from Britian in good faith. The next email we get back, which we believed would be a confirmation of our badges and table, stated that giving us badges would cost the company 1000 dollars and that we would only receive 4 badges and the table. At 85 dollars per badge, there are those of us who cannot afford it. We are hoping to relinquish such things as the meal in a possible compromise, but the clear backpedaling on their openness to recieve us has definately hurt us since many of us had already spend hundreds on the flights to get us there. It's just another example of the company squeezing money from a product and at the same time killing it to benefit it's next product line.
maths never was my strong point, but... (Score:2)
Aha. Sure. Can you say 'flawed foundations'?
Ever notice that... (Score:2)
Then again, since I don't play the game, I could be wrong. Are people really loosing hundreds or millions in pp's to MLM scams?
-Rusty
Tax and Legal Issues (Score:5, Insightful)
Now yeah, I'm being simplistic, but the point is, if these online virtual economies continue to grow (and slip over into the real world), one day some legal genius is going to realize that there's money waiting to be collected. So what are these consequences? Do you think it's likely? What would be the liability of companies like Sony and Mythic?
Re:Tax and Legal Issues (Score:2)
So in the year that you sell your items, you would have to declare the income on your taxes, in whatever countries you might be subject to taxes. I imagine that you could probably get away with deducting some of your "business" expenses which might include your game subscription costs, hardware and software costs, and ISP costs, maybe some "home office" expenses, etc. The funny thing is that when you actually include these sorts of expenses in your calculations, many people might find that they were actually not making much money at this type of thing.
I think that there are also some rules about "hobby businesses" that prevent people from taking paper losses year after year while they play with their beany babies or other hobby type activities that they claim are businesses. In cases such as those, you can probably get away without having to pay taxes on any "business" income you might generate as long as you document sufficient expenses, but I think you are prevented from continually claiming losses against other earned income.
Of course none of the above should be treated as legal or tax advice. Consult a professional. Don't sue me.
Re:Tax and Legal Issues (Score:2)
I guess it depends on what your definition of a game is.
We need your help.. (Score:5, Funny)
While I was on this one server (Score:2, Interesting)
Maybe I did not like my character or my server. I made another one, level him/her if need be and equipped accordingly and go to search for other worlds.
May I will pick a server where I have to start from ground zero. That is okay because I am not worrying about catching up with the Jones' or Smith's because I can actually roleplay my character. If I die due to the storyline, then I can choose to remain dead forever.
I went to one server who had every type of weapon imagined and to help you buy those weapons, you could exchange 1GP for 50,000GP.
In my game, I can play gawds or mere mortals on a whim. I can have weapons which destroys waves of enemies or I can tough it out with a humble longsword and the clothes on my back. I play on servers where there are dedicated staff wanting to help those players. The DM-to-player ratio is no more than 1-to-10.
All of this at the cost of buying the game.
The game I am refering to should be quite obvious.
My gawd, why in the hell do people still play and pay MMORPG's especially UO, EverQuest or DAoC? Do you actually think that spending days upon days in a room killing the same creature over and over again just so you can get one item is fun? Is killing the same MoB's over and over again just so you can level up just so you can do it all over again fun?
That sounds like torture to me. Thanks but no.
Please Save Kaz-ryn! (Score:3, Funny)
My name is Kaz-ryn, I'm really nice, and I'm asking for your help!
You see, I have this huge platinum debt and I need 20,000 pp to pay it off!
So if you have an extra "fugi tunic", please send it my way!
All I need is 1 pp from 20,000 people, or
2 pp from 10,000 people, or
5 pp from 4,000 people...
-You get the picture!
Together, we can banish EverQuest debt from my life!
The article is the worst form of drek (Score:2)
What I did find was this site, and I am going to use it as a reference for the remainder of my article: http://www.eqtotalsecrets.com/. Not to act as a pusher, but I found this in 5 seconds. For 20 dollars I could buy this, make the money, and sell PP at half the normal cost. I would make my money back in maybe 2 hours. So yes, the program, for 20 dollars, is easily found.
So now we have checked our facts and found out that the EQ macro program IS in fact possible. We have found out that it is entirely possible that 3 million PP per day is being made per server. Now that we have our information, lets look at the effects of said facts.
The EQ Total Secrets guide is a joke, a huge scam that's been around for well over a year. I love how the article author uses it as a "fact" that you can easily make plat in Everquest.
The reason there's so much plat in EQ is really pretty simple, it comes into the economy and never really leaves it. So over 3 years a big ole piles of it built up.
But if you really do believe EQ Total Secrets can tell you some hidden secrets of earning more EQ plat than you can ever imagine, I can do one better.
Send me 20 dollars and I'll tell you how to MAKE MONEY FAST! You'll be a millionare within a year, easy. I'll let you in on the secrets those MILLIONARES have used to BUILD THEIR FORTUNES!
And you know since the above was written on the Internet, it's just gotta be true.
Confessions of a plat farmer (Score:5, Informative)
"EQ cracks down on macroing, finally huh....
I thought since the cat was now out of the bag I would share some interesting EQ news that is currently going on with people selling plat for real money on sites like Player Auctions & Ebay. I have been a long time sellers and have always made a nice bit of money selling EQ gear, however about eight months ago I stumbled on a gold mine, err platinum mine.
I found out how to macro a trade skill in Everquest that made me about 40,000 plat a day, so naturally I set up one computer and started macroing 24/7 and turned around and sold the plat I made on PA for about $240 (for 40,000pps). Well it didn't take long before one computer turned into ten computers, and 40,000 plat a day turned into 400,000 plat a day and $240 a day turned into over $2000 a day in real cash. After a month I noticed other people using the same macro as myself and before long the prices of plat started dropping on all servers from about $60 to depending on the server anywhere between $35 to $50 per 10,000 plat, down from $60 per 10k on all servers. So at this rate I figure I was flooding in about twelve million plat a month into the EQ economy, not bad for one guy!
Everything was going fine and dandy until about three months ago when everyone and their mother found out about the macro, prices fell both in game and out of game and I saw that I was now making about half of what I used to, still not bad for having a computer sitting there macro on its own and I was making more money of this macro than I was off doing item and character sales. I used to make about $8,000 a month doing item and character sales and I was now making well over $20,000 a month even with the price dips just from this macro! Being a everquest seller you have a lot of contact with other sellers and I was simply amazed at the amount of plat being pushed through, hell I was running ten computers with the macro but I talked to at least six, yes six other sellers who were running more computers than me! One guy was making over a million plat a day! At one point I added up more than 30 million plat being pushed through Player Auctions a day.
OK, now hopefully you get the idea, a LOT of plat was being made and dumped into the EQ economy, a conservative guess of at least 30 million plat a day for the last three months, I tend to think the number was at least three times as high as you can't see all the sales going on, you only get a small window to look through to see the amount of sales on PA & Ebay. I can't count how many times I was contacted by people claiming all this plat was ruining the game and economy, mainly other sellers worried about the drop in prices of EQ items & characters. I agreed but I wasn't going to sit back and let others do it while I sat by idly. I have seen several posts on various message boards about how there must be some kind of dupe as the amount of plat on the servers is out of hand and EQ has to put an end to it over the last eight months I saw several people defending Sony saying they were doing everything they could to find and put a stop to the influx of plat destroying the servers.
I know for a fact that Sony has known about this macro for the last six months, as I was cc'd a copy of a email sent to three different people at Verant from a person who used to macro and was trying to get it stopped. The person in question gave them every last detail of the macro, what vendors it worked on, what skill, every detail needed to put a stop to it.
Of course today was the big crack down, most everyone running macros was finally getting caught, you can read it about it on the boards over at hackersquest and player auctions from a variety of people getting busted. I find it amusing that Verant has never cared a whit about all the plat being dumped on their servers until the time leading up to the release of planes of power. They don't care that all that plat was being dumped on their servers, well at least unless it hurts their sales of planes of power. But don't worry, a month or two after the release, there will be something new, there always is.
I have no point really, just thought someone out there might find all of this interesting.
Anonymous"
Real world money (Score:4, Informative)
The author of the article is talking about the damage potential to the EQ economy. Now, I am not an EQ player, so I could not care less, but I have seen what the damage to an MMORPG can be with Ultima Online.
I thought the point behind the article, or at least the direction my thoughts ran in, was that you could come into this game, use a few accounts, and make some real world money. After going through some numbers (those in the article and a few posted here), you can make a good living from this.
Using one slashdot poster's numbers (1k pp per hour selling arrows), you could make (real world) $5 USD per hour. Burger King rates.
Using the numbers from the article (4500 pp per hour), you could make $22.50 USD per hour. Skilled technician rates.
Using some of my own numbers, inflating slightly but IMO not unreasonably to 6000 pp to 8000 pp per hour, you could make $30 - $40 USD per hour. Administrator/Engineer rates.
For most people, that is damn good money.
These were all calculated assuming an 8 hour day, constantly playing and making pp, and using an average from www.playerauctions.com of $50 USD per 10,000 platinum. Overtime would of course make you more, but not at time-and-a-half.
Re:Sigh... (Score:3, Informative)
No, the noun platinum has neither singular nor plural. This is of course true for silver and gold too. You can, however, say things like 'one (two) platinum coin(s)'.
Tor
Re:Sigh... (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Sigh... (Score:2)
Yeah right... next you will be telling me the plural of sheep is "sheep".
I am always amused when I get to teach native English speakers (?) their own language.
Platinum does not have a plural, it is a noun but you can't count it. Thus 'two platinum' is incorrect (try two platinum coins, instead). Sheep does have plural, it is just that that the plural form coincides with the singular form.
Tor
Re:Sigh... (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Sigh... (Score:4, Funny)
There were two platinums in your sentence, BTW.