Of course. Fighting it is the best solution. I used to see this in the same light as the drug wars but as I work on my stupid little project, I realize it is more like drunk driving or murder…

You know what? Shut up.

You know what? Fuck you.

Okay, I got that off my chest. Sorry. You’re a designer, but I’m a player. Seriously, you don’t want your players to shut up. That would be a Bad Thing[tm].

There’s something to be said about the sanctity of the game and the purity of the economy. A *lot* to be said. The idea that there’s no way to beat these guys except to go to their level is a failure of imagination. Volumes have been written on why Station Exchange-style economics are bad for games in general, so I won’t re-hash them. I’ll just say that this player things that RMT is a Bad Thing[tm] and she won’t be playing any games that incorporate it.

Okay, sorry about the “Fuck you” thing…

Ask yourself how many players are willing to play a game where those who pay extra for stuff gets the stuffs, and those who don’t keep up become the have-nots. Ask yourself if you’re willing to play second fiddle to Bill Gates, or some reasonable facsimile.

There are ways to slow down the effects of farming and ways to catch cheaters/dupers and follow their “money trail”. It doesn’t take a genious to figure out that items created can be logged, and programs can be made to check those logs and who might have created something that doesn’t fit.
And why the hell are we still stuck with static spawns after all these years and all these problems?

Microtransactions and direct item sales are the future. Proven in the asian market, proven in mass market social products (Habbo Hotel pulls down 5 mil a month in item sales).

It’s palatable, profitable, improves relations with the players and castrates parasitic business models.

But the thing to mull over is…

How do you alter your designs to work within the new sales model? The classic bullshit time=investment=accomplishment model we’ve been using doesn’t work particularly well anymore…

Maybe we should make a new game insteadof regurgitating dikumuds?

Just some more grenades.

Team up with some financial institution. Take your game and give everything in it a monetary value. Open up anonymous savings accounts for each account your player owns with the financial institution, the ownership of which would belong to you and the player. If they find an Uber Sword of Rabbit Slaying, they can put it on the market. When it’s sold, the real dollar amount that was assigned to it is transfered from the buyer’s account to the seller’s account. The user can pull money out of his account at any time, and can put money in using a credit card. When the account runs dry and your subscription fee comes due, their credit card is automatically hit for the fee.

Here’s where the real trick of it comes in… You can only allow X ammount of dollars worth of equipment to circulate in your game based on your player base. By this model, the farmability of your game would soon run dry, causing your farmers to move on to greener pastures. The problem is that it also might break your game in the player’s eyes.

This is why I’m not an accountant.

That doesn’t make the comparison invalid at all. His solution, to have the developers do sales directly, would be similar to the government legalizing drugs and then having the government itself sell them. The party enforcing the prohibition switches to selling the goods. As long as they keep the prices reasonable enough to discourage a black market, it’s a fine idea, IMO.

EQ2 went another route. The WoD equivalent would be the government legalizing drugs in certain cities, and allowing dealers to do the sales to the users, but taxing it and regulating it so they keep it “honest”. That way users don’t have to worry about getting a bad batch and sellers don’t have to worry about going to jail. Another fine idea, IMO.

And yes, Hellfire, if you want RMTs to go away entirely, then designing your game to make them irrelevant IS the only solution. Attack the demand, and you can actually make a difference.

Pretty much the ONLY solution that doesn’t work in the slightest in these situations is prohibition, to attempt to attack the supply without abating the demand. You can do it if your “police” outnumber the users and dealers combined, but we don’t live in such a police state and game developers can’t afford to hire individual CSR reps to personally monitor every player.