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Games Entertainment

A Gaming God For Dollars A Day 88

Posted by Zonk from the itty-bitty-living-space dept.
Wired is reporting on the new "Gamepal" service, which offers up the chance to MMOG players of renting a character in an online world for only a few dollars a day. From the article: "GamePal customers pay a $300 deposit, $150 for the first month and $130 for each subsequent month for access to their choice of 50 accounts (available initially) for 14 popular MMOs, including EverQuest, Star Wars Galaxies, City of Heroes and Ultima Online. Newcomers to these games who aren't sure where they want to devote their time are in luck: GamePal allows them to try out what they want."
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A Gaming God For Dollars A Day More

A Gaming God For Dollars A Day

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  • Odd... (Score:2, Insightful)

    by MeanderingMind ( 884641 )
    For incredible amounts of money, you can find out what characters you might be interested in!

    Might I suggest these money saving tips to avoid such wallet emptying options.

    A) Read the manual
    B) Check out a fansite
    C) Observe other players
    D) Just play the game

    It just doesn't make sense to me to pay what amounts to almost half a year's worth of MMORPG subscription fees just to see where you'd want to invest your time. Isn't half the fun in doing that yourself?
    • City of Heroes [cityofheroes.com] has a downloadable 14-day trial, no credit card or anything required. Voila, the best way to check out this MMOG... a demo.

      It worked on me (Ex-calibur on Victory).

  • This is new? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Crimson Dragon ( 809806 ) * on Friday June 24, 2005 @09:34AM (#12899889) Homepage
    I always get a kick out of people being shocked over the financial gain in MMORPG commodities. The sale of in-game gold, powerleveling, and now character renting are more common then they ever were. This is a disaster for the MMORPG community.

    I am an MMORPG vet. I spent many good hours of my youth, and now my adulthood, on UO, DAOC, EQ, EQ2, WoW, and the like. While the gaming experiences were different, a common element arises in this form of gameplay. You can ALWAYS tell the difference between a player at the maximum level who earned it, and a player who just picked up the account the other day on Ebay or through other forms of sale. You can always tell the difference between the person who quested for their items long and hard at the expense potentially of his/her sanity and the person who doesn't. It is that simple.

    I could proceed to flame here. These players are less skilled, they decentralize the community attachment at the higher echelons of the game. They have no right to do this.

    But they do.

    Most of these account sales, sadly, come with the original product CDs. They are legal sales. Most of them carry the disclaimers the EULAs make them ("we own the account, not you. You are paying for the usage, not the ownership"). There is no law broken in the sales if done properly.

    Do they eviscerate a previously elite community where you knew that every person earned their keep? Oh yes. Do they have a right to? Oh yes. People who don't know how to play have a right to play alongside the most skilled of players. We don't give people an IQ test to vote in democratic governments, do we?

    If we can't apply it to the most basic of principles, we cannot apply it to an MMORPG.

    I don't like it, you don't like it, but they have a right.

    • Re:This is new? (Score:3, Insightful)

      by mwvdlee ( 775178 )
      Then again, having to fork out the dough for WoW or whatever just to see if you'd like this type of game is a bit expensive too.

      I can see a market for this.

      It would be nicer if the developers of MMO's would allow sort of "look around" accounts for newbees, say an account with limited abilities as to not affect the paying players too much but will allow the newbee to see if this is what (s)he would want to spend money on. (i.e. starts at level X, ends at level X + 2)
      • Good point. They can let you connect for free as a chicken or a lizard or something, so all you can really do is walk around and observe (and probably get killed by some normal player for 1 XP or something). That would make a lot of sense.

        I guess you won't have the ability to talk either.

        • Actually... (Score:3, Informative)

          by CaptMonkeyDLuffy ( 623905 )
          Currently at least one of the MMORPG's has a 'test' system. Anarchy Online will let you play the basic game(no expansions), with no purchase, no monthly payment. If you want some of the features from the expansions, you have to purchase those and pay the monthly fee however.

          That said, it will give you a very good idea of the game before putting any money down, a lot more than wandering around as a chicken or lizard.
        • I would also recomend EVE Online http://www.eve-online.com/ [eve-online.com].

          I've been playing about 6 months and it's awesome. The client software is a free download, you only pay monthly fees (US$15/m or so). There is no levelling grind as skills train whether you are online or not. Thus a player who can only commit for 1h/day will build up their stats (almost) as fast as a 15h/day power gamer.

          And the best part for you ... there is a free trial system. Any current subscriber can send you what's called a "buddy" invite. Y

      • Some games do that partly - they give current players guest invitations they can give to their friends.

        Why only to current players? Abuse. When people can get in for free the number of people who come in and play and pretty much piss in the well is HUGE. Linking these freebies to someone else's account at least makes people need to be somewhat accountable for their actions - if they behave badly, their friend who gave them the invite gets in trouble.

        The forums for every major MMO require a person to have
    • Make character death permanent. Give experienced players a good chance of survival, but make it so that if you're not experienced, you come in on your first day off ebay, do something stupid and uh-oh spaghetti-oh. Let characters be ABLE to do really stupid things like attack their own faction and become outlaws. Just exploit that difference between the experienced players and the bought ones.
      • Ah, but these are subscription services. The last day I played Diablo II was when I died somewhere and couldn't retrieve my gear - it was wierd situation.

        I was moving towards being tired of that game and I sure wasn't going to put the kind of effort needed to recover in.

        You wouldn't want to see that happen to your revenue stream would you? Significant penalties to character stats could accompany death though and still keep the game attractive.
        • What, put on second set of equipment or encountered a bug?
        • Good point. I neglected to play KOL for a month or two, and when I came back my account was gone. I hadn't finished all of the adventures yet, but I'll be damned if I'm going to go back to square 1.

          I'm not complaining about my account being deleted - it's a free game and still under development to boot. However, it does serve as an example of how a lot of players would respond to permadeath - they'll probably start playing a new game.

      • Re:There's a very easy fix to this (Score:1, Interesting)

        by Anonymous Coward
        Perma-death cannot work.

        The last time I died in WoW started when I heard something hit my character and then the game froze. One quick reboot later (and several failed login attempts because it hadn't closed my previous session) and I finally log in to a dead character.

        Until you remove crashes and lag and disconnects, you can't have perma-death in a game designed to take as long to build a character in like an MMORPG.

        • Perma Death, and Why it pwns (Score:4, Informative)

          by Shihar ( 153932 ) on Friday June 24, 2005 @03:38PM (#12903882)
          "Until you remove crashes and lag and disconnects, you can't have perma-death in a game designed to take as long to build a character in like an MMORPG."

          "Until you remove crashes and lag and disconnects, you can't have perma-death in a game designed to take as long to build a character in like an MMORPG."

          I think that is the entire point. You CAN have perma death. Armageddon MUD has no holds bar perma death and does it very well. Further, it is REAL perma death. No ressurecting, no gods, nothing. Get stabbed to death and you die. Period.

          The difference between a perma death game like Armageddon MUD and WoW is night and day. The two are built upon an entirely different style of game play.

          First, numbers generally trumps skill. Five complete n00bs can kill almost anyone. Even the best warriors when faced with five opponents will only be good enough to escape, but never win. It is a scaling system, so there is still advantage to getting good. So, a great warrior can take on one n00b and kill him within seconds. Two n00bs also present no problem. Three n00bs and he probably come out badly wounded but alive. Four complete n00bs vs a skilled warrior is an even match, and five tips the scales. These does a couple of things. It prevents players with way too much time on their hands from becoming immortal. It also makes even the most green newbie worth something. Just having an extra guy with a sword at your back, even if he only knows which end to hold it by, is worthwhile. This makes it so that newbies are valuable, sought after, and quickly integrated into in game organizations. This also prevents more powerful players from owning the game simply due to the amount of time they spend in game.

          Second, the skill system is a level less skill system. Skill is increased by failing. Further, the rate at which you can increase your skills is capped off. You could set up a macro to do a skill all day long, but you would find that you don't advance any faster then anyone else. Play time still is going to effect how powerful you get, but much less so. Your ability to survive plays a much more important role, because once you are dead, you are dead. So, a complete newbie that avoids death for a year will be more powerful then a veteran who has played for 10 years but has just died and had to start a new character.

          A side effect of such a skill system is that it encourages more sane behavior when it comes to improving upon yourself. If you decided you wanted to be a kick ass warrior, what would you do? Go out into the streets and pick fights or join the army? This skill system encourages the same sort of rational. You could wander out side of the protection of the city and go NPC farming, but you would get just as good if you join the local band of mercenaries and sparred for a few minutes every couple of hours.

          Third, the game is brutally harsh. There are no n00b zones. There are in fact no 'zones' at all in the traditional sense. Places are not separated by skill levels. The desert just outside of the main city in the game has things that anyone with a rock can kill, and it has things that take a small mercenary company to take down. There is no such thing as safe place to hunt. There is further compounded by the fact that the game is open PvP. Leave the city and you put yourself at risk. Some people get good at living in the danger, but most people just die. This has the neat effect of concentrating the population into cities. The cities themselves are fully developed. Some areas are tightly controlled and any sort of unlawful activity is met with deadly force, while other areas are slums and have no (official) police protection at all. It forces people to travel in convoys and groups between cities. It actually creates a real environment for trade because it is so difficult and expensive to move between cities due to the high danger. Some people get rich off trade, others die trying.

          I have rambled on long enough. The major poi
      • The game works on subscription. If you had permanent death, there would be a percentage (probably large) of people who simply quite after they lose a character that they worked over (at least) a month to get where they are.

        People quitting == less subscription money

        Less subscription money == angry EA execs

        And nobody wants an angry EA exec...
    • "I don't like it, you don't like it, but they have a right."

      They have the right unless the gaming company says they don't. It's the gaming company's product, so they can attach pretty much whatever rules they want. If the company says you may not sell an account, then you may not sell an account.

      -Jeff

      P.S. The hard one to get around is having someone else play your account for your. There were services in DAoC that would power level a character to 50 over the course of a day or so (and then equip with
      • "It's the gaming company's product, so they can attach pretty much whatever rules they want."

        No they can't..... it is not that simple. They bundle a copy of the license with the product. The CDs themselves, legally, are yours. You can wipe your butt or make deadly weapons out of them and throw them at the employees of the maker, the worst you would get is nasty cuts in the former and Assault with a Deadly Weapon for the latter. The EULAs and TOSes on the account itself are the things that become able t
    • They are legal sales.

      They might in legal in the sense that no statutory laws are being broken but they're illegal in the sense that the license (a contract) is being broken - if it forbids it.

      Some would argue though that the license cannot prohibit sale of the account. Those are untested waters.

      Don't make the generalization that if the cd is transferred its legal.

      Most MOMs will terminate you if they find out you're selling or buying accounts or at least declare that they will. Good luck in court tryin

      • Re:This is new? (Score:1, Funny)

        by Anonymous Coward
        Most MOMs will terminate you if they find out you're selling or buying accounts or at least declare that they will. Good luck in court trying to get your Paladin back then.
        Ouch. When my mom caught me all she did was ground me...
      • Actually an MMO is a client that accesses a service you pay for. The main difference is that there wasn't a single case that found a service contract unenforceable because it was presented electronically or something. You enter a contract that states you will be rendered certain services as long as you keep paying and stay within the rules of the contract. In theory they could even get you for breach of contract if you violate the ToS. Services fall under different laws than "licenses" and I'm pretty sure y

  • A deposit? (Score:1, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    What exactly is the deposit for? Can you damage the character in such a way that there needs to be monetary compensation?

    • You could give away all the character's money and possessions...return him stark naked.
    • You can actually. You can damage their reputation. So I would assume that the deposit is to deter any misuse of the character's already established reputation.

      With that said, I really fail to see this endeavour last past the critical first 6 months.

      Rented characters have no friends, no history, no appreciation for their equipment, no guilds and no ties to the player. This all adds up to painful grouping experiences and even more painful raiding experiences for anyone unlucky enough to group with a re

      • Re:A deposit? (Score:2, Funny)

        by Golias ( 176380 )
        Overall, this sounds like a bad idea.

        People thought pet rocks sounded like a bad idea, but the guy made like a million dollars!

        I would try something like this myself, if I wasn't busy with the design of my "Jump to Conclusions" mat.

    • Re:A deposit? (Score:4, Informative)

      by Cecil ( 37810 ) on Friday June 24, 2005 @10:49AM (#12900623) Homepage
      What exactly is the deposit for? Can you damage the character in such a way that there needs to be monetary compensation? ... *Hovers his mouse over the "Delete Character" button* ...
      • Well, if someone does that to all the characters, the $300 deposit isn't really going to cover the losses, is it? (Assuming they're expensive high-level characters that they'd have to re-buy at substantial costs.)

        Also, isn't this against the ToS of most of those games, which usually prohibit account sharing?
        • The question is not whether it's worth the losses. Deposits are rarely intended to cover losses. The idea is to provide a disincentive from losses in the first place. The question you need to be asking is "Is it worth someone's while to spend an extra $300 of their own money to delete all the characters when they will get no real benefit out of doing so?" The answer to this may well be "yes", but my point is that you need to make sure you're asking the right question first.
          • No real benefit? Well, someone willing to exploit this could just hand over all the equipment from all the characters in each of the 50 accounts to characters they own in each of the games and sell all the equipment on eBay. Could be enough to turn a profit.
        • If you have one high level player & multiple accounts, it's trivial to power level more high level players. In fact, it's possible to join Club Calamari (level 50, so named for the "squid" archtypes that open then) in day's worth of grind. Multiple players only slow this slightly, due to the way COH scales XP (and a second scrapper killing can speed up the process vastly). I don't know about the other MMOs, might not be as easy there.
  • That price seems pretty pricey to be trying out high level characters to see what you want to play.
  • 150 + 130 = 300?
  • For approximately the cost of a good character, you can rent a character? So essentially, you're guaranteed to be losing money. I guess if you've got the $450 start up cash, plus $130... But wait... What about the game software? Surely there's another $50+ dollars there (for the game, plus whatever expansions have to be enabled to play it). You're looking at around $500 to try a game. Man, I wish I had that much spare cash...
    • For approximately the cost of a good character, you can rent a character? So essentially, you're guaranteed to be losing money. I guess if you've got the $450 start up cash, plus $130... But wait... What about the game software? Surely there's another $50+ dollars there (for the game, plus whatever expansions have to be enabled to play it). You're looking at around $500 to try a game. Man, I wish I had that much spare cash...

      Some things you are wrong about.
      The game and expansions are tied to the accou
    • It gets worse... More than likely, the "good character" you will be renting will have been powerlevelled by poor asians in gil-seller sweatshops. They will have okay-ish gear, no skill development, and carelessly-chosen power sets. You will be renting a character which has an impressive-looking level, but will get routinely spanked by challenges which legitimate characters can handle easilly.
    • When you say "cost of a good character" you're thinking only of money - not the countless hours to get there. There are people out there that don't have the time, but do have the money to rent a good character. I can think of at least one executive who likes this type of game and would be willing to rent a character...
      • When you say "cost of a good character" you're thinking only of money - not the countless hours to get there.

        But the fact that the game isn't entertaining enough for everybody to play through the levels shows another problem with MMORPGs. Obviously, if the game were fun all through the leveling, and there weren't hours of tedious xp'ing required to level, everybody that wanted to play the game just would. It takes two...the people with more money than time, and the developers who spent more time puttin
  • this one is dead? ;)

    I think that the real life selling of virtual items is probably the lamest, lowest form of gaming ever. MMO's breed this and while there are the people that will always say "what does it hurt?" and "If you have a problem with it don't use it" it is a degenerative practice and should be stopped.

    Instead it is being embraced, Sony has set up their own ebay-like auction site and MS has stated the XBox 360 will enable and encourage real life sale of in game items. This needs to end, and soo
    • I just wanted to point this out as one of the least substantiated posts I've seen in awhile.

      Why are we squashing this, exactly? Certainly a closed economy might be more enjoyable, but is it the only way?
      • It is degenerative to any game. High lvl chars with people running them that haven't a clue get in your party of legitimate high level chars and the entire experience is ruined. It also takes a lot of the developers design and throws it right out the window. No developer designs a game thinking that players will start off at the top and have every weapon/item so it unbalances the game for regular players... not only that but it messes up the in-game economy to have gold flood in from people buying it as wel
    • "... someone outside the industry needs to step in and squash this, and quick."

      What you want people to pass laws against it or soemthing? Thats really what we need more stupid laws they do not help anyone. Get a grip it is not that big of a deal people should be able to do what they want.

  • What? (Score:3, Funny)

    by RyoShin ( 610051 ) <<tukaro> <at> <gmail.com>> on Friday June 24, 2005 @10:12AM (#12900281) Homepage Journal
    I don't play many MMO games, so I can't be certain of the monthly prices, but $450 upfront seems like a rather steep price, even if it has access to pre-made accounts for 14 games. It better come with a free hooker. And blow. In fact, forget the MMO games.

  • Oh no... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 24, 2005 @10:34AM (#12900479)
    Oh please dear god don't let this include FFXI (at work, can't check TFA). Nothing fills me with more terror than the idea of complete newbies running around with high level jobs, even if only on a temporary basis.

    This isn't just an elitist thing; it's more of an "I don't like dying" thing. Levelling at any point beyond level 18 or so (and preferrably a long time before then) in FFXI requires that you join a party, usually of 6 people. Roles in these parties are pretty defined and a good party needs all of its members to be on the ball. Depending on his role in the party, a single incomptetent can do anything from dramatically reducing the rate you get xp at to causing the death of the entire party.

    Most jobs grow in complexity as you level up and gain new abilities. For example, as a Paladin, you can get away at first with just tanking by using provoke. As you get into the 25-30 level range, it becomes more and more importand to keep hate by using cure spells and abilities such as shield bash. Ideally, you should know how to use Cover (a notoriously fiddly and tricky, but incredibly useful ability) by the time you hit 40 and certainly by the time you are 50. In a level 60 party, a paladin who didn't know how to do any of this stuff would get his party killed... fast. By cutting out the learning curve on a job, you are putting yourself and others at risk of unnecessary deaths and xp loss.
    • You're well beyond too late. People already buy FFXI characters off of eBay, hence a lv 27 red mage who couldn't grasp that I could only provoke every 30 seconds.
  • patience is a virtue they say , A virtue many of us are not blessed with.
    Lucky for them the good people at GamePal are here to help by giving you a trial of a game with a high level character which would normally take ages to build up .
    So instead of throwing down your 10 Currency units on the table to play the game and see if you like it , you pay a few hundred to rip out a large amount of the fun of the game and generally defeat a lot of the fun in playing them, lets be honest a lot of these games rely on
  • in my experiences newbies playing high level characters suck anyways, and die alot... doesnt that negate the intended "experience" of high level play?
  • I'm pretty sure this would be a violation of the terms of service for any online game.

    I don't know how this place could stay in business if all of their accounts get shut down.

  • Why not? (Score:2, Funny)

    by benjamin264 ( 813527 )
    I already buy my friends, so count me in!
  • ... of MMORPGs. Those of us who actually enjoy the adventure and interaction have the game spoiled by powerlevellers and macromaniacs. Kudos to MMORPGs that serve up different environments/servers for those of us who want to just enjoy the game.

  • Bad idea, inexperienced players (Score:3, Interesting)

    by DavidYaw ( 447706 ) on Friday June 24, 2005 @03:23PM (#12903692) Homepage
    This is a really bad idea. Any new player who uses this service will have no idea how to play this high level character. All high level characters are quite specialized, and players who have taken the time to get them to a high level know all the subtleties needed to play that character effectively. Someone who just bought/rented a character will have no idea how to even play the game, much less be aware of the subtleties needed to play that character well.

    Example: I play Lineage II (http://www.lineage2.com/ [lineage2.com] ). A couple months ago, I was grouped with this one healer. I asked the healer which armor set she was wearing, since I didn't recognise it. She responded with the name of an armor that's meant to be worn by a damage dealing melee character. When I asked her why she was wearing that type of armor, that it wasn't good for her character, she switched to another type of armor... which was still the completely wrong choice for that character. I asked "You just ebayed that character, didn't you?", and she promptly left without saying another word.

    The point of that whole story is, most MMOs have a very strong focus on group play in the later levels and endgame. If there are inexperienced players in the group, then the group will go badly. If the group goes badly, then the player will get an unfavorable impression of the game, and the other, experienced players will not want to group with the inexperienced player again, further giving the the player an unfavorable impression of the game.
  • Renters get their deposit back if they don't do anything to "damage" an account -- getting demoted to lower levels, ditching in-game possessions or violating the games' terms of service, Smith said.

    Considering that the sheer act of transferring an account in this manner is a violation of most of these games' terms of service, does that make this operation one giant and very public scam?

    The guy also claims that people won't mind account renters more than they do account buyers. That's not true, because a
  • MMORPGs are about role playing with other players (a massive number of them, online). As such, you can't possibly learn what the game is "like" by playing it for a couple of hours, no matter how advanced the character is. If you really want to know what the game is like, go over to a friend's place and sit behind them as they play. Tell them to save all comments to after the game session. Then get them to debrief the session to you. We could do this online I suppose, by having players create videos of
  • ...of posting this extremely relevant link.

    Zing! [penny-arcade.com]

    So now you not only can buy items for a MMORPG, you can rent characters? For little as $300 deposit and $150 / month? Sheeze. Get a new hobby.
  • I always wished that you could get a demo of MMORPG's to play before comitting to buying a $50 game and then having to spend more on the monthly fees (though most games do come with a free month). I thought that a good demo would have been to allow full, unrestricted access to the one newbie zone, like Atlas Park in City of Heroes. You can't leave the zone for other higher enemy areas, but within that area you can do anything the regular players can. You can play until you level up a few times, but soon
  • I've never been able to understand how people are willing to pay money like this for MMORPGs. Why would you want to pay large sums of money to play, as a high level character, a game that you're unwilling to play as a low-level character? There's nothing significantly different about gameplay at high levels and, without the experience of actually leveling a character up through the levels, you're going to suck because you don't know what your skills are, ruin other people's gameplay & be left with an

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