“I want my. I want my. I want my RMT.”
From Dan Rubenfield’s modest proposal:
If you run the game, your cost of goods for item sales will ALWAYS be lower than the gold farmers.
So you want to beat them and make cash on the side? Change the playing field. You sell the items. You sell the gold. They drop their prices? You drop yours. Make it easier and cheaper for these players who want to spend the money to buy from you instead of the third party.
I can already hear the cries \’e2\’80\’9cOHNOES. Sanctity of the Game!@!@ Purity of Economy!@!@ Money!=Accomplishment\’e2\’80\’9d.
You know what? Shut up.
Sure, all we have to do to put IGE out of business is to turn up the money spigot. All it takes is about 2 days work on a web application and sticking an API on the game server. Wallah, any time you want, generate in-game cash with the touch of a button!
What Rubenfield espouses isn’t RMT: as most understand it, RMT is player trading with player (or farmer, or arbitrage trader, or what have you.) It’s still understood that the money came from somewhere. It isn’t counterfeit currency (unless your game has a dupe, which it probably does); it was earned, by fair means or foul, by someone. Rubenfield instead espouses… well, let’s call it Darwinism. In the time honored tradition of failed governments anywhere, when faced with an economic challenge, let’s just print more money! It’s not like we can’t just create the stuff. It’s not like it has any inherent value — after all, those people who ARE buying gold/items through RMT are just wacky suckers, and we might as well soak them while the market holds, right?
It’ll destroy the game’s economy, of course. And it’ll – correctly – teach your players that for your game’s administration, everything is negotiable given enough currency. But hey, IGE won’t be selling much gold on your server, because they actually have to run through the motions of running bots with the latest sploits, while you have access to the best sploit of all: a SQL query tool.
The problem with unfettered Darwinism is that it violates the same trust that we then turn around and accuse IGE and their ilk of violating. Namely, taking decisions, in enlightened self-interest, in the interest of your game’s community. Simply becoming a better IGE doesn’t solve anything, except maybe your short term money flow. And it doesn’t really show an understanding for the alternate business models coming out of Asia and casual social spaces like Habbo Hotel; even in the rabid capitalism seen in that market, company-manufactured sales are used for intangibles and subscription replacements, not a farming-shortcut.
So, what Rubenfield proposes is sort of like achieving peace in the Middle East through nuclear strikes on Sweden. It’s certainly an interesting idea, definitely original, ultimately unhelpful and probably not what anyone had in mind.
(To play devil’s advocate, I’ll leave you with one way that Rubenfield’s point would work – making your game’s currency freely convertible, but pegged to a real-world equivalent, not a floating currency. 10 Quatloos = 10 cents, always, backed by the game company at any time. To my knowledge the only game that does this? Project: Entropia. See you on the sweat farm!)
I actually think MMOG-companies should take over this market themselves. Although it -does- affect the economy (to say ruining it is a bit too strong) I think the overall effect in removing RL paid gold-farmers, reduces the incentive of hacking/exploiting is for the better of any game.
Although EQ2 is a miserable game in my view, I would like to know more about how SoE’s Station-market has affected the game. This is a prime example where a MMOG-company has done exactly what Dan Rubenfield argues.
This -is- after all an entertainment industry, so why shouldnt the customer be allowed this kind of services if they pay for it? And if you choose not to offer this kind of service, dont act horrified that 3rd parties take over the black market.
I find the idea of giving in to IGE very bad. I would say repellant, but IOAG. At the moment I play WoW:
In WoW a simple farmer-only affecting soft limit on gold and item transfers is all that is needed. In WoW, farmers can apparently clear over 600 (or X) gold in 24hrs or something, without lucky Epic drops. Which means they need to on average transfer 600 gold off their accounts every day. No normal player needs to transfer 4200 gold EVERY WEEK. They might have to assign gold values to items periodically, by doing what add-ons do and averaging Auction House prices. Include these gold values in the transfer limits. If you exceed the limit for more than 2 days at a time, the limit becomes a hard limit for you. Those with the hard limit set can then be investigated.
And to cover guild banks:
Introduce a proper guild banking system, that can only transfer items to and from members of the guild, who have been members of the guild for at least one week.
I post this to be shot down in flames by people with more experience
In addition to the soft limit on individual accounts, you’d need the ability to tie multiple accounts to one limit.
To prevent the farmers from switching to a Dayworld style of play.
-Walt
I, personally, like Eve’s solution: all the money in the world won’t buy you very much stuff you can use in under a year.
Well, unless you buy an account.
Ooooh pretty topic icons. Lum-nostalgia! I always knew he would come back again. Will we also see the smurf icons again I wonder?
Magic the Gathering Online pegs it’s “currency” as well, $1/ticket. Virtual assets are also convertable into tangible cards via redemption, which is the stated justification for the real-world card pack price. Although it’s interesting to note they recently started selling older, out-of-print sets online only with no redepmtion at real card prices – I guess it’s like dropping the gold standard once enough people trust your currency.
This setup only works because there’s no monthly fee, however. If you had a MMORPG without a nodrop system, and with enough money sinks, you might be able to only charge for ingame cash and go no subscription.
> Wallah
Please tell me this is one of those jocular net-isms, like deliberately typing ‘teh’ or ‘evar’. Please.
Developers could avoid hyperinflation by suplanting IGE instead of working double shifts at the mint. Buying gold from players on one end and reselling on the other.
On one hand, this is the ultimate gold sink. Got more gold than you know what to do with? Cash out and buy beer.
On the other hand, what if supply cannot keep up with demand? Can the dev’s resist killing the golden goose?
On the gripping hand, are farmers employees? How do the taxes work? It’s one thing for J. Random Hungarian to run his own little sweat shop and not pay Uncle Sam, but I doubt Sony would get away with it for long.
First of all, this problem has little or nothing to do with WoW. Which is a good point in and of itself.
Dan wrote his article in response to the Lineage 2 community’s outcry. In L2, we do not have instanced bosses. Farmers who run 30 characters using 10 people (botting the extras), show up at the instant that a boss spawns, kill it, and take all the loot. For some of the top bosses, players will contend with the farmers but you essentially have to PK all of them and risk having them drop you and take your gear. What I mean is… that community is going nuts over this problem. Lower level guilds are at the mercy of the farmers, and higher level guilds can barely compete.
Understandably, many L2 players, and Dan (don’t know if he’s played it), feel this is an unstoppable problem. Certainly, it cannot be stopped by GMs alone. However, it is important to understand how L2 got into this state and WoW has not. L2’s design lent itself very well to farming. In fact, most farmers who play WoW, EVE, DAoC, every other game, started with L2. If they didn’t I’m sure their bosses did. It is a shame, what this game’s design has forged in our genre, but unstoppable… no.
WoW has not seen it’s economy and end-game “destroyed” like L2. So what does this mean? Through solid anti-farm designs, you can have a game where farmers do not have a major impact. Non-instance, political pvp games, like L2, may have gone the route of RMT permanently, but not every game has to.
There is also one more point to be made, and that is of community self-policing through generally accepted moral behavior. I think if the CSR and GM teams were permitted to interact directly with server figureheads, leaders of important guilds, and influential members of the community, they could create a trickle-down effect of morals and sportsmanship. In L2, at this point, people on the two well known fan-forums (l2blah.com and l2orphus.com) have signatures which read “L2Walker User” or “L2Superman User” (the two most popular bots). Some even have screenshots of the OOG(Out Of Game) version of the bot as a signature along with proud lists of the characters they have gotten banned or sold.
When you allow the community to deteriorate and decay to this state, you are bound to have overwhelming issues that GM bans alone cannot fix (you can’t ban 50%+ of the server).
voi\’c2\’b7l\’c3\~ (vw\’c3\’a4-l\’c3\’a4′)
interj.
Used to call attention to or express satisfaction with a thing shown or accomplished: Mix the ingredients, chill, and\’e2\’80\rdblquote voil\’c3\~!\’e2\’80\rdblquote a light, tasty dessert.
Wallah \\Wal”lah\\, n. (Zo["o]l.) A black variety of the jaguar; — called also tapir tiger.
FYI
I used to think that gaming companies should just sell in game items.
I’ve changed my mind as I work on my own story boards.
The solution is one of control.
As in real life we rarely if ever stop a murder from occuring. In online games we will rarely if ever stop farming or selling from occuring. The goal should be one of punishement for those that do farm or sell or buy.
A police force seperate from the folks who help in game (the firemen and policemen if you will) need to be created.
Right now it appears we have firemen who we expect to be policemen too. Bad idea. Two forces. Two jobs.
Hunt them down and punish them.
How about something much more simple to implement:
A “Gold Statistics” section of a character profile, viewable by anyone.
Total Gold Earned: 4,250
Total Gold Spent: 8,600 Apocalypse, premeir PvP guild on Arthas is now recruiting! Looking for more level 60 druids and rogues. GOLD BUYERS NEED NOT APPLY.
“Gold Statistics” would not carry well as a universal system. I’ve earned very little money in a lot of games, but what I do earn goes to my clan, and then they give me things. For most of my L2 career, I never had to look at player stores because all upgrades were provided through my clan.
I imagine in that case, my clan leader would have something like:
Total Gold Earned: 1,000
Total Gold Spent: 1,000,000
Since they’re spending the money of the entire clan and upgrading them personally
Although EQ2 is a miserable game in my view, I would like to know more about how SoE\’e2\’80\’99s Station-market has affected the game. This is a prime example where a MMOG-company has done exactly what Dan Rubenfield argues.
I did a quick comparison between the cost of platinum on Station Exchange (Vox server) and the cost of platinum on Ebay for Antonia Bayle. The cost of buying plat through Station Exchange was about 5 times higher than Ebay.
As far as affecting the game, from what I’ve read the 2 Station Exchange servers are just as you would imagine. To really compete you have to have loads of cash to buy plat and in-game items. It’s a rich boys club.
“It\’e2\’80\’99s a rich boys club.”
End game raiding guilds/clans/troops/whatever tend to be led by, and the core of, tend to be individuals who do not need to be or are not (for better or worse) concerned with money.
The top player organizations across WoW, EQ, Eve and Guild Wars (my control group sue me…) all appear to be led by and have a core group of leadership that would be conidered by me and I think most reasonable people as “rich boys”.
An interesting anecdotal evidence point, which I can back up. Most guild leaders I’ve known (but not all) have been idle rich, or housewives. I suspect this is due to the wholehearted embracing of an MMO community requiring copious free time.
For once, Lum and I see eye-to-eye about RMT.
The company selling gold for cash is a very different thing from third parties farming gold for cash. Station Exchange is thus, I understand, not an example of Dan’s plan, because it acts merely as a real money brokerage.
Leadership doesn’t usually carry the “rich boy” quality as much as some of the members. I know in my experiences, the leaders tend to be people with less real world obligations who can devote massive amounts of time to the game and can blaze trails in order to get the top loot, instead of buying it.
I guess it comes down to your definition though. Does paying $50 a month on account subscriptions qualify you as a “rich boy”? I don’t think many top leaders have the need to spend thousands on the game like some of the lower rich boys trying to keep up with them by buying their way to the top.
D-One:
End game raiding guilds/clans/troops/whatever tend to be led by, and the core of, tend to be individuals who do not need to be or are not (for better or worse) concerned with money.
Lum:
An interesting anecdotal evidence point, which I can back up. Most guild leaders I\’e2\’80\’99ve known (but not all) have been idle rich, or housewives.
I agree. But what I’m saying is that on the Station Exchange servers, it’s not just the guild leaders and the end-gamers that are the “rich boys.” It’s the whole population. You cannot hope to play on these servers unless you have lots of cash at your disposal, period. Which is fine I suppose, if that’s your thing. But if this is the future of MMOs, then most of us simply won’t have the disposable income to play the games we love.
I don’t entirely understand why a person with less money to spend can’t have “fun” on an EQ2 station exchange server. So your equipment is not as good as everyone else’s… how does that impact your gameplay? You can still do all the level-appropriate encounters, right? If not, then they need to retune the mobs. Or do you find you have trouble getting accepted into groups because they expect you to have better gear? In that case, the game should support more solo play. We’re not talking about PvP, here, so the competition aspect is mostly in one’s own head, and no different from casual players who “cannot hope to play” on non-exchange servers because they don’t have time to play the game 40 hours a week.
Amber said: “But if this is the future of MMOs, then most of us simply won\’e2\’80\’99t have the disposable income to play the games we love. “
This is a scary thought, and I’ve had it as well. However, it is important to remember that todays subscription came out of the old pay-by-hour model (which is still in use in Asia, though through a cafe owner as the middle man). What I mean though, is that most people did not have the money to play a pay-by-hour MUD at $2+ per hour for more than… 20 hours a month at most. Rich boys could play for 50 or even 100 hours per month. This was somewhat of a problem considering that time = progress in most of these games.
So along comes subscriptions. Everyone is happy… for a time. However, now we see everyone wanting to go back to a model that pumps more money out of those with disposable incomes, and ignores those who don’t.
If this switch really happens, it will only be for a time. MMOs became popular because of their relatively cheap price for unlimited entertainment. Those of us who would rather not spend more than $20 per month will always be a viable target demographic. I don’t think we’ll ever be pushed out of persistent worlds for good.
Embrace change! It’s the only thing that’s certain.
“You cannot hope to play on these servers unless you have lots of cash at your disposal, period.”
Amber,
You must see the irony of your statement. The people with the most disposable ingame currency and items are of course the farmers. Unless the items and currency are purely the results of exploits (which I doubt) the base of the entire server’s economy are of course those willing to work their way up from nothing to having what everyone wants but doesn’t want to put in the game time to get.
Just a clarification:
http://stationexchange.station.sony.com/faq.vm
Q: Will SOE ever create and sell characters, items or coin on Station Exchange?
A: No, not for EverQuest II — all transactions on Station Exchange will be player-to-player. There may be other games in the future designed for that business model, but SOE will not be selling EverQuest II characters, items or coin to players through Station Exchange.
To really compete in any game on the market you need lots of time to invest into the system. Grinding/xping/raiding/etc. Money in the rmt makes it so that time is now not the only variable in advancement. If you can match the 40hr a week player by dropping money on ‘resources’ (gold, leveling service, items, accounts whatever) and spend only 15-20hr a week then it becomes very smart to spend the extra for parity that would otherwise not be obtainable. Especially since at many salary levels the disposable income is high enough that instead of a plasma tv in every room a fraction of it is spent on a hobby.
In the end way I view it is people with time are upset at actually having competition from another section of the populous. Tough luck, people with money always get into the equation in some way. Best to just plan on them ahead of time and work with it.
Damijin-
“Does paying $50 a month on account subscriptions qualify you as a \’e2\’80\’9crich boy\’e2\’80\’9d? “
Maybe not by your standards; however, someone who can afford a roof over their head, food, internet access, high-end computers, and multiple accounts while doing nothing except playing games all day is probably rich by many people’s standards.
Some more anecdotal evidence to support Scott’s-
My older brother started his own marketing firm in 1999. After two years of building a client list and establishing a business routine, he started to rake in large sums of money with little to no effort. Enter daoc in 2001 and he is quickly the highest ranked Paladin on Gawaine, and GM of our guild, Unity. He rerolls after two years of paladin suckage and quickly becomes the highest ranked Iniltrator in the entire game. I was the only officer of the guild who wasn’t independently wealthy. All the others were sitting on piles of cash and had endless amounts of time on their hands.
Anyway what was my point? I forget now.
Eve sells game time cards, which you can resell for ISK. It’s crushed the ebay Eve currency market, has allowed people who otherwise couldn’t to play and isn’t inflationary. THAT to me is a better model for the way to do things.
Eve sells game time cards, which you can resell for ISK. It\’e2\’80\’99s crushed the ebay Eve currency market, has allowed people who otherwise couldn\’e2\’80\’99t to play and isn\’e2\’80\’99t inflationary. THAT to me is a better model for the way to do things.
http://search.ebay.com/search/search.dll?cgiurl=http%3A%2F%2Fcgi.ebay.com%2Fws%2F&fkr=1&from=R8&satitle=eve+online+isk&category0=
Here’s an interesting alternative system for you, inspired by the recent release of Xen’drik Expeditions Campaign Standards (a WotC-sponsored D&D campaign), and, to a lesser degree, Living Greyhawk Campaign Standards.
Instead of getting gold, or items, a character gets an ever-increasing “Equipment Value”. From this Equipment Value, he can requisition whatever equipment he/she likes, up to that value. Each piece of equipment has a “blackout timer” where it can’t be changed for X amount of time after requisition.
Now, the items that the player can requisition are based on what he/she does in the game. A character gets access to such things from adventuring, exploring, killing X# of monsters, killing X monster, killing X type of monsters, etc.
To take the place of gold/item trading, players can trade access to different types of items. However, this access is temporary and level-based – A similarly levelled character could trade access to, say, “Fire-proof Leggings” for 24 hours in exchange for access to “Coldbane Breastplate” for 12. In addition, only X amount of your total EV is tradeable at any given time. So if you had a total EV of 50K, perhaps 5K would be tradeable.
An RMT market is still possible, but when it’s not permanent and things are so freely tradeable, and when an individual farmer could only trade out a small amount of things at any given time… why bother?
-Rip
=j says on June 29th, 2006 at 8:32 am:
Developers could avoid hyperinflation by suplanting IGE instead of working double shifts at the mint. Buying gold from players on one end and reselling on the other.
That’s what Second Life does. It’s run exactly like the NASDAQ, where you can go in and set up buy and sell orders at particular prices, and when the buys and sells intersect in the middle that’s when a sale actually happens. For those less interested in playing it like a market and more interested in just buying or selling some Lindens, there’s the buttons that circumvent the order placing process and just fill the best open order.
There’s no reason at all for farmers to try to sell outside this in-game market, because this is where they will get their best prices. And the prices stay pretty low because since it’s legitimate more people are participating with their casually earned in-game cash, so the farmers have less of an interest in the market and thus less interest in farming Lindens in Second Life.
Essentially, it turns into a gold sink for your veterans and a gold source for your newbies, but it’s all optional.
nuking sweden could work… as could nuking the moon
http://www.imao.us/docs/NukeTheMoon.htm
Goe, would rather nuke france.
Amber, price not volume (although that’s down too)
There are any number of ways to “skin this cat”. Of course the essense of the problem comes from the abstract nature of MMOs systems.
If gold and everything else had weight and there was no teleporting or flying for player convenience, the practicality of gold farming would be severely diminished.
If items could be stolen freely when killing a player, gold farmers would need to spend a lot of resources on security.
What is amazing is that we are into, what, the second decade of MMOs, and game designers don’t bother to design their game mechanics to address these problems? That is perhaps the biggest question and most apalling part of this.
As noted above, by going to a “Virtual Asset Purchase” model, which is becoming increasingly popular in Asia with games like KartRider and Maple Story…the problem just goes away.
There are upsides to RMT & gold farming. Obviously, there is a demand. Players are apparently spending several million US dollars a month on virtual assets. That says that the players are not happy with the game… or are willing to spend a fair chunk of change to improve their game experience.
Steven has addressed a couple of the issues that I intended to bring up, coming into this conversation late. Namely, the issue of design not keeping up with this issue (despite all the RMT seminars I’ve sat through where the refrain is “It’s a design issue” and the overall designs not changing) and the demand side of the equation.
In many ways, this entire overarching discussion is typically approached piecemeal and from different specific angles and rarely as a whole. Farmers and bots (not the same thing) obviously tend to impact the quality of play for “legitimate” players. However, they wouldn’t be there if there wasn’t a demand.
I do believe it is possible for the MMO companies where this is an issue to essentially take over this business, or at least experiment. My main caveat being in regards to the “ownership” of sold items, gold, etc.
Without getting to verbose or specific, I believe that by tweaking no-drop status of certain items, balancing quest rewards versus purchased items and allowing players to buy items and in-game currency, it would be possible for an MMO company to either remove or seriously curtail bot/farmer activity on those servers, keep the money themselves and limit the negative perception.
It’s at least worth a try.
Rich
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