Sony Bringing RMT To Vanguard

Eurogamer reports that Sony Online Entertainment will be adding the ability to do real money trading to at least some of their Vanguard: Saga of Heroes servers. It's the same service they opened for a pair of Everquest II servers a while back. Quoting: "The service, offered by Live Gamer, allows players to sell items, currency and characters for real cash through a secure channel, authorised by the game operator. Most real-money trading in MMOs is a 'grey' market that doesn't have the operator's consent. ... Sony Online Entertainment recently said that it had no intention to bring its other real-money trading initiative — the Station Cash item shop — to Vanguard."

Sheer Rumour

[glowworm]

According to Mr. Smedley at http://www.massively.com/2009/03/13/soe-brings-real-money-transactions-to-vanguard-despite-smeds-e/ [massively.com] this is totally a rumour. RMT will not be hitting Vanguard.

IMO

[derfy]

Best to have the RMT market run by by the people in charge rather than having a black market with recalls and chargebacks.

Lesser of two evils, I suppose.

Re:

[revlayle]

Honestly, this should have happen long ago... this way there is LESS gray area to weed through, people get their goods, the "people in charge" make more money and the rise of less legitimate operations slow down.

Is it perfect, nope, not a bad way to go ultimately.

Re:

[KDR_11k]

A problem is that when you get real money from stuff that drops randomly you essentially randomly win money. That's gambling.

Rumor?

[Anenome]

This is just a rumor, as it turns out. But, I could swear, for a moment there, I felt a disturbance in the force... like millions of money launderers cried out in joy and then were suddenly silenced.

Re:

[Danidas]

It is not a Rumor and is confirmed, they are adding live gamer to all Vanguard servers.

All Vanguard Servers

[Sage Gaspar]

According to their FAQ on the official forums they're adding it to *all* Vanguard servers, which is actually more problematic than in EQ2, which opened up specific new servers. Although I guess if you want to milk the cash cow and you only have four servers there's not much you can do.

I think this is a really poor move on Sony's part though, what little playerbase they have in VG tends to be the "hardcore" gamers that care about "accomplishments" and all that kind of time investment in the game. Especially

Re:

[vux984]

I think this is a really poor move on Sony's part though, what little playerbase they have in VG tends to be the "hardcore" gamers that care about "accomplishments" and all that kind of time investment in the game.

I agree completely. I think the whole 'real money' aspect of any game is just pathetic and I wouldn't touch it with a 10 foot pole, and I'll avoid players who use it with the same pole.

HOWEVER, that said, I have no real gripe with 'people who want to ruin the game for themselves and those around t

Re:

[Doctor Morbius]

What he's complaining about is that he spent huge amounts of time and effort getting what he has and he doesn't want anyone else to get the same stuff without also spending huge amounts of time and effort. This is a common problem in all MMO games as time goes on. They add new features to the game to reduce downtime and improve playability and all the old timers whine about how how hard they had it when they started playing etc.

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[vux984]

They add new features to the game to reduce downtime and improve playability and all the old timers whine about how how hard they had it when they started playing etc.

Because the 'old timers' played the game for YEARS. The reason they did this was because they enjoyed the gmae just the way it was. Making it ever faster and easier pisses them off because they actually liked it just the way it was. That's why they played it for YEARS.

Worse, they dumbing it down for the benefit of the new players who are whini

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[vux984]

How exactly does someone buying ingame items with RL cash have ANY affect on you whatsoever?

First: A lot of people measure their progress in these games as a sort of 'score'. If you can simply purchase 'progress' that undermines it as a measure.

Its the same as going to the track to run a timed lap with a club stopwatch. If its accepted policy that if you can't get the times you want, or don't feel like actually even driving, that you can just buy whatever 'best time' you want. Then the any sort competition

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[KDR_11k]

The difference to track records is that a record only improves if you actually perform better while an MMO character improves as long as you perform good enough. Records are an indicator of skill while character levels are usually an indicator of time spent playing.

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[vux984]

The difference to track records is that a record only improves if you actually perform better while an MMO character improves as long as you perform good enough.

1) Being able to make RL transfers means that you longer have to even 'perform good enough'.

2) Your character level by itself is pretty irrelevant by itself, its the gear you are equipped with that represent the places you've been and the encounters that you defeated that are the record of your skill and accomplishments, and the level of in game wea

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[vux984]

How can you be competitive in an MMO without it being PVP?

In precisely the same way you can have a racing competition without it being 'smash up derby'. Or a rifle competition without shooting the other competitors. Its really not hard.

Going OMG WE MANAGED TO FIGHT IN x PVE INSTANCE AND WIN! is not competing,

No different than sking, mountain climbing, sprinting, rappelling, fishing, sprinting, weight lifting, skeet shooting, or a hundred other sports where the competitive objective is to beat your opponent

Re:

[Sage Gaspar]

Or just boot up Dawn of War, Starcraft, Warcraft, Civ, TF2, Counter-Strike, Natural-Selection, Call of Duty, etc, etc, and go head-to-head with people on an equal footing and without all the timesink bullshit or the monthly fees. EVE or Planetside if you need an MMO fix truly designed for PvP. I never understood the PvP-or-die people that have nothing but disdain for "carebears" but insist on playing games where their main playstyle is a hastily cobbled together mishmosh of 80% "carebear" bullshit, 15% gank

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[Sage Gaspar]

Why play a game that has this PvE element at all? Is there a compelling reason you want unbalanced teams and a 20-30% handicap for not grinding? I sort of understand the thrill of "risking" something that you've invested time into, but when you invest time into a computer game for the sake of risking wasting it, it just seems very artificial. I prefer to just jump into the action and take the Pepsi challenge with people on an equal footing.

Re:

[Opportunist]

Well, when they open another Van server, the average one person that you meet per hour vanishes as well, so...

Then again, unless something changed considerably since I left (roughly a year ago, after they offered 2 weeks of free "come back and look how great it is now" time), you don't want to meet others because as soon as someone shows up, the lag spikes become unbearable.

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[velen]

This is a bad move. If this goes on, we will have to worry about paying taxes on revenue generated from online gaming and provide a statement of accounts on what we f!@#!@ did with virtual currency in a virtual world.

Furthermore, the US government is already doing it's analysis on how to enforce taxation on funds in MMOs. This will give them an excuse to do something stupid.

What next, you sell a lvl 1 bat wing for 1000USD and get picked up by the Feds?

People still play vanguard?

[argoth]

That's the real news story here.

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[Dachannien]

Yes, but they're all gold farmers.

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[Opportunist]

I was wondering the same.

I played Van when it came out. Now, I've seen many MMO launches, from EaB and DAoC to WoW, but I've rarely seen such a bad one. Population was quite good (and lag absolutely unbearable when more than 5 people were in the same area), but balance was nonexistant (the Cleric of all classes was the overpowered one), 2/3 of the content (i.e. diplomacy and crafting) didn't work at all, broken quests wherever you looked (and some that worked were just braindead, one quest I remember contai

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[drsquare]

What confused me most about Vanguard is why the graphics were so much worse than other MMOs, but the performance worse as well. I thought it was supposed to be inversely proportional, i.e. when you turn the graphics up the framerate goes down, these developers have managed to make it work the other way.

I was getting maybe 5 fps in the bland, completely detail-less starting area with buildings popping up ten yards in front of me. What the fuck? And the first-person perspective meant when I was killing tiny c

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[drsquare]

My system plays other, better-looking games fine, it's just Vanguard that chokes. Why should a game with no graphics have such poor performance?

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[Sage Gaspar]

Mostly people who value exploration and timesink accomplishment I think. The classes seemed pretty good to me after the revamps and I've heard the one raid zone they did eventually open was pretty fun although I never got near enough to try it out. They're in extreme danger of losing those people anyway now since an interesting dungeon that was available at launch and always broken was finally slated to be "released" in a completely revamped form last summer accompanying a level cap increase to 55... was de

Re:

[chrisG23]

Tell me again why I should play this game?

I don't know why you should, but I checked it out for a month last month to see how it is doing. Here's a summary report:

Good - Population decent, travel is now easy thanks to a portal system and rentable flying mounts for lowbies (they last for 5-10 minutes). There is a starter zone that is nice, and it takes you to lvel 10 with decent gear.

Bad - Computers and graphics cards are now at the point where settings can be turned up and the graphics of the game c

Re:

[Opportunist]

All nice, and the "fighting" content is slowly coming to a level where it's playable. But, bluntly, why should I play Van and not any other game if I wanted battle content?

Van touts its "three independent area" content, and it fails to deliver that. It was supposedly possible to become a fighter, a crafter and/or a diplomat and each and every area should be completely independent of each other. And that's simply not the case. Unless something changed considerably in the last 6 or so months, diplomacy is sti

Re:

[Joe U]

Sony bringing fun and entertainment to Vanguard would have been a BETTER FUCKING TITLE.

HELLO SOE?! Games are not meant to be frustration-fests.

Idiots raised Station Access to $30 a month and everyone I know took off. What were they thinking?