My latest MMORPG.com column is up: this one is on RMT, which I’m sure a few have one or two opinions about. I tend to write these columns with an eye towards a reader that *doesn’t* obsessively read every MMO-focused blog and message board, as opposed to you, Dear Readers, who I assume know far more about MMO-related drama than I do.
Ironically, I've never actually watched any of the CSI shows.
Also, I’m employed! (At least for 3 months – after the end of which we’ll see if I move to full-time from contracting.) I’m a developer attached to NCsoft’s Customer Surveillance Unit (CSU) team, which is being put together to quash RMT, botting, and such in NCsoft’s titles. The irony of not having to ask where to go for the job interview did not escape me.
It’s not a design position – I’m still determining if I want to get back into design at some point in the future or just work on my own garage-band titles. Heading up the design for two large projects roughly one after the other which failed to make it out the door – well, I’d be lying if I said it hasn’t been difficult for my ego. We’ll just have to see where things go – in the mean time this new position certainly has some interesting challenges of its own.
#1 by CmdrSlack on November 23rd, 2009
Geld, no matter how many times you call RMT an “illegal” industry, it doesn’t make that statement inaccurate and largely untrue. RMT may violate specific clauses of EULAs (which are themselves suspect from a contract perspective). However, until there is specific statutory or case law that declares RMT “illegal,” it’s just a grey area.
It *might* be breach of contract, it *might* be tortious interference with a business opportunity, it *might* be conversion, but it’s not illegal in the sense that you can go to jail or be whalloped with massive civil damages for it.
You may not like RMT, and that’s fine. However, when you misuse language, it makes your arguments hollow and unpersuasive.
#2 by geldonyetich on November 23rd, 2009
Well, it would from a perspective of the lawyer where the exact vocabulary is important and with the legal training to understand the distinction.
However, from the upstanding layman’s perspective, that is to say without qualified legal presentation reassuring us contrary to popular belief, being firmly within an established ‘gray area’ is illegal enough to quality for the use of the word, and a goodly bit of the stigma that goes with it.
That said, a disclaimer: I’m nothing but biased on this matter. I’ve pretty much been waving around a burning flag of “RMT is evil” the whole time. Am I going to make it sound worse than it is, perhaps even subconsciously, just by speaking about it? Hell, yeah I am. I’m a gaming zealot. I’ve proposed having cheaters’ hands removed at the wrist more than once.
#3 by geldonyetich on November 23rd, 2009
Besides, whether or not RMT is illegal, as outlined in Lum’s article, many RMT sellers are involved with a number of confirmed illegal activities, such as credit card fraud. So there’s a pretty good chance you’re dealing with criminals to do it.
#4 by JuJutsu on November 23rd, 2009
“I’ve proposed having cheaters’ hands removed at the wrist more than once.”
What do you propose for those villainous scoundrels that remove the tags from mattresses?
#5 by geldonyetich on November 23rd, 2009
I’m a gamer fanatic who places irrationally high value in the sanctity of online games. If you’re looking for a suitable grisly punishment for mattress tag removal villains, seek you a mattress production fanatic who places irrationally high value in the sanctity of their mattress tags. I wouldn’t be surprised if one exists among those who might have some vital job-related use for the presence of that tag, at least after encountering the nth matress without one.
Actually, it’s not particularly the RMT folk I feel that way towards, it’s more along the lines of the kind of scum who employ aim bots and wall hacks and the like. You can cheat all you like on your own, that doesn’t hurt anyone, but when you force your cheating upon others in an online game then, as far as I’m concerned, you’re scum for whom the presence of their hands is being misused. If removal of your hands doesn’t stop you, we can move on to other appendages.
#6 by geldonyetich on November 23rd, 2009
(Of course, I don’t seriously intend to act this out any more than someone who’s pet peeve is jaywalking seriously intends to run one down. I mentioned that just to underscore the severity of how biased I am against cheating in games.
As for why “it’s not particularly the RMT folk I feel that way towards” it’s because the sanctity of an MMORPG’s play experience is somewhat questionable to begin with.)
#7 by Sullee on November 24th, 2009
Grats on the gig, sir. The best thing about contracting is also the worst thing.
#8 by Tremayne on November 24th, 2009
@CmdrSlack
Goldfarmers’ activities are most definitely “illegal” – what they aren’t is “criminal”. It’s a fine distinction, perhaps.
Incidentally, do you have any source to back up this idea that EULAs are “suspect from a contract perspective”? I keep seeing this thrown around, but haven’t yet seen any case cited where someone challenged a game’s EULA in court and had it found to contain illegal contract terms. Mostly, I just see this “fact” quoted by people taking a stance of “the EULA’s illegal anyway so I can do whatever the hell I want”. It’d be nice to know if these moral infants actually have a leg to stand on…
#9 by Hatch on November 24th, 2009
“Goldfarmers’ activities are most definitely “illegal””
Um… maybe against a TOS or a EULA, but not illegal. Illegal implies some actual law, not a breach of contract.
Also, I play a game to have fun. If it’s worth $15/month that fun is worth something, right? Taking that a little further, farming gold is not fun so I should like to do as little of it as possible. I actually enjoy my job, working one hour of overtime is easier than farming gold for even 10 minutes. One hour of farming anything can fetch me possibly 1k gold tops (and that’s reaching). One hour of overtime will fetch just under 10k gold and I get to feed a hungry chinese kid! I’m not seeing the problem here, I get to enjoy raiding and not have to farm? I’m supposed to feel bad? Hell no. I play games to enjoy myself, just because you added a game mechanic that grinds my scrotum into a cheese grater does not mandate that I need to use it.
You know what game I didn’t need to buy gold for? DAOC. Why? My main focus was PVP and you actually made money killing people. PERFECT! I can stay inside my enjoyment bubble 100% of the time. If Blizzard was serious about stopping gold farming they would make raiding give you more cash than it costs you.
Blizzard will say that gold sales cause hacked accounts, but wtf is that supposed to do? Discourage me? Money has a real world demand, should I stop using it to help stop crime? It seems like the tail wagging the dog. Mythic was serious about stopping gold sellers and the banhammer counter showed it. If Blizzard was half as serious the problem would stop, I know that.
#10 by Tremayne on November 24th, 2009
Hatch,
Breach of contract is “law”, just not “criminal law”. You don’t go to jail for breach of contract, but it does involve courts, and lawyers – you know, law stuff.
DAOC had definite RMT problems too, I’m afraid – some gold selling, but also a lot of power-levelling and account selling. You didn’t buy gold – did you buy your level 50?
#11 by wayld on November 24th, 2009
After living through a case of WoW account theft I can not understand Hatch’s point of view. Oh well, actually yes, I can understand it. I’ve heard this exact words before, and it seems logical at first.
But the main flaw is to think it only costs 1 hour of your time spent at work. For you, that is. My girlfriend’s account was hacked, everything sold, and since she’s officer in the guild she had certain rights with the guild bank, which was empty afterwards. She spent half of the day calling customer service and writing and apologizing to people affected by this. Since it also takes time to fix all the damage that was done the scheduled raid on the day was canceled, because most of the needed stuff was missing from our bank.
Afterwards, every item from the guild bank was sent to our guild leader, who had to spent some time to reorganize the bank. Running back and forth in the game for half an hour without even earning 1 Gold from it. Because someone else spent an hours payment on gold from China.
All this doesn’t mention the time the Blizzard support member was busy with it.
Well it’s only your time, fun and hobby, right? And everything else is the developers fault and problem and wouldn’t affect anyone else. They could easily handle it. The support staff which is regularly occupied with this matter must be so cheap in comparison to the simple switch that will prevent all of this if Blizzard (and the all the others, for that matter) just cared.
To Lum: best of luck with your new job! Although employing a team to fight “3rd-party-RMT” is just a sign developers don’t really care. Keep that in mind
#12 by Doug on November 24th, 2009
Again, if your logic is true we should all swear off real money and barter systems so there is no value in currency or goods. This will eliminate theft. I can’t divorce online theft from real theft, it’s theft. If I could buy from a source that was somehow 100% certifiably not involved in the theft I would, but reality shows me that’s impossible. These guys buy from anyone, and some of those suppliers are dirty.
#13 by CmdrSlack on November 24th, 2009
@Tremayne
EULAs are still technically valid, but courts are slowly moving away from full enforcement. Basically, what you have is a DROP situation (disproportionate relationship of power) where the consumer has no real bargaining position beyond, “I won’t buy that.” Since EULAs are largely boilerplate now, this means that consumers don’t really have any meaningful choice. This usually means that it is possible to sever clauses from EULAs. I wish some of the stuff I’d written about this subject survived past the closing of various sites. You can always go buy Brian Green’s book on Game Development. The contracts chapter is a solid read. (Granted, I wrote it . . . )
Heck, the necessity of EULAs comes from an ancient case where it was determined that whenever a computer loads a piece of software into RAM, it is making a copy that violates the Copyright Act. In order to allow users to operate their machines, we had to create the licensing agreement. Pretty silly when you think about it, but this is why I’ve long maintained that our court system needs a separate jurisdiction for tech-related cases. Some judges just don’t get it. The internet is a series of tubes, after all.
Insofar as RMT goes, I’d still argue that it’s not illegal per se, but prohibited by a contract. Breach of contract is primarily solved by remedies enumerated in the contract. Simply going to court doesn’t alter the legality of an action. For instance, if someone’s mortgage is in foreclosure, was their default on the payments “illegal?” Not really. If the mortgage broker or lender did things that violate the Truth In Lending Act or other regulatory legislation, it is arguable that illegality may have occurred, but then again, TILA provides for both civil and criminal penalties.
#14 by geldonyetich on November 24th, 2009
I wonder… if you’re a gold buyer and you’re aware that the gold seller you’re buying from has obtained the in-game assets they are selling you by hacking accounts and credit card theft, doesn’t that potentially make you an accessory to these crimes?
#15 by wowpanda on November 24th, 2009
@geldonyetich what you said is true but most gold buyers are not aware where that gold come from, and if I want to buy gold I would buy from some known brand, and I don’t think it is likely a big gold seller can get a stable source of gold by theft.
CmdrSlack is correct on this. Suppose you had an car accident. The accident is not illegal but you can get sued from it. Glider got sued not because it is illegal, but because Blizzard claim it got damaged by Glider and suing for lost profit.
You can break contract/EULA, it is not illegal but you can be sued for damages.
#16 by CmdrSlack on November 24th, 2009
@geldon Your hypothesis about being an accessory is most likely incorrect. Accessory crimes generally involve affirmative actions taken in furtherance of a crime before, during or after its commission. The most colorable argument is that someone receiving gold that results from account hacking or CC fraud is that they are receiving stolen goods. Of course, that means we’d have to acknowledge that virtual goods are real for purposes of the law, which opens up a whole can of worms that you and I have already opened at length.
#17 by geldonyetich on November 24th, 2009
I’d say that virtual good became “real enough” ever since taxation on them became a congressional matter. Of course, just because they’re “real enough” doesn’t mean that the company agreed that you’re doing anything other than renting them.
#18 by CmdrSlack on November 24th, 2009
Uh, they’re still not taxed, unless either a) I missed something or b) you’re talking about a general capital gains tax you’d have to pay for money cashed out via RMT selling….
#19 by geldonyetich on November 24th, 2009
I meant exactly I said, “became a congressional matter”. They considered taxing them. At that point, there’s sort of an official government recognition that there’s adequate value in virtual items for them to be considered as “real.” Although, if we were in Korea, there would be less ambiguity yet since they actually are taxing RMT transactions.
#20 by wowpanda on November 24th, 2009
@geldonyetich, even if the virtual goods are taxable, RMT is still not illegal. Just because someone could sell stolen good at ebay, it doesn’t make ebay illegal.
#21 by geldonyetich on November 24th, 2009
@wowpanda
Sure, but if you follow this conversation, I’m not talking about RMT itself being illegal.
We’re now in the territory of considering RMT from a perspective of if credit fraud and account hacking is involved in procuring the goods being sold. In this case, this could be considered in the same light as buying stolen goods.
The catch? If these goods aren’t really considered “real,” as taxation would suggest, then you’re not really buying stolen goods because the goods in question are inconsequential.
Earlier on you were saying that you believe that the bigger gold selling outfits do not engage in illegal practices. I’m not so sure – I think the bigger outfits are even more likely to be involved in illegal methods to circumvent bans and hack accounts than the individual gold seller. Last I checked, ignorance of illegal activity taking place that you are wantonly participating in was not a good defense.
#22 by wowpanda on November 24th, 2009
@geldonyetich, I am referring to your statement “Only insofar as supporting any illegal industry would.” and am responding to that by RMT transactions is similar to ebay’s.
And last I checked, the majority of gold farmers do that with their own sweat. check gold farming on wiki and I remember someone made a documentary on it.
The old street gang can keep doing illegal activity and make a profit, because they can force people to give cash under gun point. RMT is a online activity and thugs/thief can’t keep looting money from others. The only way of maintain a consistent gold source is farm, in countries where man power is cheap, humans are used, where in US bots are used.
#23 by geldonyetich on November 24th, 2009
@wowpanda
Whether or not the majority of gold seller’s hands are completely free from credit card theft or account hacking is a difficult assertion to prove or disprove no matter how strong one’s convictions may be one way or another.
#24 by Axecleaver on November 25th, 2009
I don’t understand how they can turn a profit selling 1 million kinah for $2, but it must be working since there are thousands of bots playing at any given time.
To the players, the botting is really in-our-face. To the extent that you can throw one contractor per server at the problem, just to walk around the heavy bot areas and clear them out every 8 hours, that would go a long way toward restoring confidence.
An inordinate amount of bot names seem to start with F and are four or five random characters long.
#25 by geldonyetich on November 25th, 2009
This, of course, brings forth a whole other dimension of RMT that’s been talked about before, that being, “it monetarily incentivizes people to ruin the other player’s game experiences.”
Whether bots or sweat, that there’s an angry Asian man trying to sabotage your hunting an area because it’ll undermine his quota of gold to sell to other players is a significant impact to your enjoyment for the day.
#26 by wowpanda on November 25th, 2009
bots are easily detectable, I think the big reason why bots are not detected is political (detection department: let’s add this in there. design department: don’t touch our code base!). Bots are dumb too, often you can use them at your advantage.
And if you think farmers sabotage your hunting area, so are you and other hard core gamers.
#27 by CmdrSlack on November 25th, 2009
@geldon Congress considers all kinds of things. That doesn’t give them the force of law — see also School House Rock “I’m Just A Bill.”
#28 by geldonyetich on November 25th, 2009
@CmdrSlack
True enough. But it does, nonetheless, provide certain food for thought as to just how real virtual items are becoming. Not to mention you’re completely ignoring the precedent set in Korea.
#29 by CmdrSlack on November 25th, 2009
Korea is Korea. The U.S. is the U.S. While we may be moving towards a more global culture, good old American xenophobia and lack of understanding of tech issues should keep it from being a reality for a good while.
#30 by geldonyetich on November 25th, 2009
But you do agree (or at least you have referred to it as) a fairly substantial “grey area” and that (for wowpanda’s reference) was what I meant by calling it an “illegal” industry. It’s clearly legal and, from an upstanding layman’s perspective, that’s illegal enough to steer clear of it.
Of course, this loops back clearly into my obvious bias against it. I’ll definitely be calling this glass half empty at any opportunity.
#31 by geldonyetich on November 25th, 2009
Edit: “It’s clearly legal’ = “It’s not clearly legal”
#32 by CmdrSlack on November 25th, 2009
Well, yes and no. Yeah, I see a grey area that relates to RMT, but not its overall legality. It’s a pretty big legal leap to say that because some smaller, less “legit” types hack accounts and steal CC info, the entire industry is culpable.
It would be like abolishing secured interests in real property because the mortgage industry was playing fast and loose with a specific kind of secured interest.
#33 by geldonyetich on November 26th, 2009
It would be, were it not for quite a bit of past precedent to back it up. IGE is not a “smaller, less legit” seller, they were (at the time of the scandal) the biggest big name in the business.
Can I establish that each and every gold farmer is similarly scam-minded? No. However, it does set a pretty bad precedent to consider they’re breaking the MMORPG company’s rules to begin with to even operate.
#34 by EpicSquirt on November 26th, 2009
This blog should be a forum, for now it is forum 1.0
#35 by sinij on November 26th, 2009
Gold sellers are business and you can’t sue them out of existence, since they largely exist outside of jurisdiction of United SueUs of America. You just can’t stop them by throwing more lawyers at them, so stop trying.
The only real way to stop them is to change individual player’s motivation to buy gold from them.
#36 by JuJutsu on November 26th, 2009
“The only real way to stop them is to change individual player’s motivation to buy gold from them.”
Yeah, Lum can run another Just Say No campaign. I mean prohibition has worked SO well in other contexts it will surely do the job here right? If you want to change the motivation for buying game currency make it easier and cheaper to deal through the gaming firm.
Sure there will be purists like Geldon that might boycott the game. Fine by me and, apparently, many others.
#37 by geldonyetich on November 27th, 2009
I have to agree with sinij, really. The gold sellers are just responding to a demand. I can blame those who purchase the gold much more appropriately than the gold sellers themselves.
However, I can also blame the MMORPG developers whose idea of a grind is one so protracted that many players would rather pay somebody else to play the game for them. It certainly isn’t something I’d be proud of about a game of mine.
#38 by Axecleaver on November 28th, 2009
The design argument (“design fun ways to make money and people won’t be forced to buy gold”) comes up often, but I am not sure it is valid. MMO game design – not just Aion but most every MMO – creates money sinks to protect its economic model. You use money to pay for equipment, consumables, transportation, and potentially other stuff like spending money to complete quests (earn XP). Those money sinks can be dealt with in a few ways depending on how you like to play: you can kill lots of stuff and earn money, you can skill up your craft (money sink) and eventually with some market analysis, craft something that earns money, or you can play the economic arbitrage game at the auction house which involves risk (fun!) buying low and selling high.
So there are many fun ways MMO’s provide for you to feed the money sinks. Or, you could skip all the fun and just buy the gold. I think no matter how many different ways there are to do it, how accessible making money is, or how fun it is to make that money in your game, people would still buy gold. A lot of folks play MMO’s to get to the endgame as quickly as possible, and buying gold helps them do that. It shortens the fun of the game and I don’t understand the appeal myself, but it’s still there. So, I don’t think the “design fun ways to make money and people won’t buy gold” argument holds much water.
#39 by Hatch on November 28th, 2009
@Axecleaver
I see what you did there. “Or, you could skip all the fun and just buy the gold.” Let me fix that for you:
“Or, you could skip all the caulk and ball torture and just buy the gold.”
See? I just forced my opinion inside that innocent little sentence just like you did, and I made a victim out of it too. Most MMOs have a hardcore grind mentality for everything. If one of those MMOs is accidentally fun in one aspect or another (like DAOC PVP) and I should somehow end up actually liking that aspect, it doesn’t mean the rest of the game is fun. The rest of the game is most likely in the way. If I have 8 hours to give a game in a week, I want 8 hours of fun. When I pay for a thirty minute massage I don’t feel it’s normal to get twenty minutes of proper service and then spend 10 minutes sliding bare @ss down a cheese grater so I can say I worked for the privileged.
In fact, the rest of the game probably sucks. If I buy a pizza and everything is good but the crust, guess what I’m not eating? I’ll hide the crust somewhere if I have to, by which I mean I will circumvent the design and I really don’t care what anyone thinks about it. I paid for the pizza (game) in the first place. After all, it’s only a pizza. Yes there are kids starving in the world (people getting accounts hacked), thank you for pointing that out, kid who reminded the teacher to assign homework. Saying the game is flawed isn’t just the easy way out. It’s the truth. The bottom line is that if I have to play the game the “right way” I won’t be playing anymore because I get no enjoyment out of the cheese grater treatment. I think a lot of companies see that, and that’s why they let it slide so much.
I mean honestly, if every can of Budweiser had four ounces of human urine added to the contents before it shipped how much beer do you think they would sell? Yes the beer would do great in Korea, but those people are weird and we know we can’t consider what they think on account of the urine chugging. Right now every MMO is shipping with content that is mostly urine. On occasion I find the fun nugget and I craft myself a urine filter. Sure the TOS and the EULA tell me I have to drink the urine, but you don’t honestly think I’m listening to that do you? Really? You can craft your statements whatever way you like, blame me if you like, I’m not drinking urine.
I’m still not really satisfied that I have conveyed how bad grinding is, but I’m going live with this comment early and I may patch in more content later. Stay tuned!
#40 by Hatch on November 28th, 2009
I’m going to patch that statement right away, a hotfix if you will:
“I think a lot of companies see that, and that’s why they let it slide so much. ”
It’s missing a sentence before that. I was essentially pointing out how lax almost all games seem to be on gold sales (for the buyers that is). That if I have to not pay for gold in a game where gold grinding is the standard then I will not play at all. I think a lot of companies see that, and that’s why they let it slide so much.
Besides, if you ban just the sellers they’ll resub over and over, and that looks GREAT on the quarterly report. Essentially they’re money wh0ring and I can’t blame them, I do the same thing!
#41 by Brask Mumei on November 28th, 2009
Well put, Hatch.
RMT: The urine filter of MMORPGs.
It also explains why RMT is so ugly, game breaking, and morally repugnant – no one likes a urine filter, no matter how useful it is!
#42 by geldonyetich on November 28th, 2009
I’ve been having a hard time enjoying MMORPGs lately precisely because of that. The trouble is that the flow is all off.
If you’re a newbie MMORPG player who is picking up the game for the first time, a leveling rate that lets you slowly figure out how to get into the game is appropriate. On the other hand, if you’re a veteran MMORPG player who has done the drill a million times before in the games that this game clones, the newbie’s leveling rate is torture. A veteran player might have fun when they get to the end game, with all the tools and advanced activities that part of the game offers, but the rest of the game is just a 300+ hour long unskippable tutorial.
On top of this, we’ve a ton of other reasons why you might need a shortcut in advancement. Maybe you play with a bunch friends who have more time to play than you do and you want to play with them but they’ve out leveled you. Sidekicking/mentoring systems help, but are not universally available and are rarely a perfect solution (e.g. even sidekicks can’t enter certain zones without adequate levels). Maybe you’re in a competition with other players who have longer to play than you, and paying bribing somebody else to give you an edge over them seems like the only way you can win. (Which invalidates the spirit of competition to begin with, but that detail is easily overlooked when your nose has been on the grindstone long enough.)
So, despite being an RMT hater, I do understand the design problem in which justifies its existence. A game should be fun – you should want to actually play it. When you’d rather pay somebody else to play it for you, then something is wrong.
However, don’t fall in love with your urine filters. Gold sellers aren’t simply a useful device (though I’m sure they’d prefer you believe they are). They’re people who see money to be made and aren’t afraid to break some rules to do it. You might love alcohol, and be thankful that there a means for you to beat the prohibition to get it, but you don’t love organized crime because they have a nasty tendency to cause a lot of fallout damage as they operate. RMT sellers bring to a game a lot of campers, bots, and just generally undermining the very sanctity what honest advancement is supposed to mean in an RPG by what they offer. I have some very good reasons not to like that RMT is going on and these mirror most of MMORPG developers’ – they’re not just banning RMT to keep people in the game longer.
In the end, maybe instead of paying some borderline criminals to keep playing an MMORPG with an insufferable grind, you should cancel your subscription to the game outright. What kind of tool would you have to be in order to pay somebody else a lot of money just so you can keep paying $15/mo to the MMORPG developer who is wronging you in the first place? This is why I don’t play a whole lot of MMORPGs these days.
#43 by Hatch on November 28th, 2009
In my mind, I don’t see it as a whole lot of money. Do you have any idea how much money I spend on my motorcycle, and how few hours I enjoy it compared to an MMO? MMO’s (even including the cost of RMT) are so inexpensive they show up as a cost savings in my budget.
#44 by geldonyetich on November 28th, 2009
In the wider scheme of all your costs in life, sure.
In a more examined scheme of computer game education budget, there’s a lot better bangs for your buck available than a game that requires you first buy it, then pay $15/mo, then sucks badly enough that you want to pay somebody else to play it so you can continue to pay $15/mo.
#45 by geldonyetich on November 28th, 2009
I meant to write “computer game entertainment” budget, but that was an interesting Freudian slip considering Raph’s equating fun in games to learning. ;P
#46 by human filth parade on November 28th, 2009
Hey man, doubt you remember me it was years ago back on stratics IRC network.. yea that long. Anyways, I read about the spot at NCSoft — I did not however read all 90 some comments so here goes: I’m familiar with NCSoft and know that a good chunk of the dudes are doing quality control nonsense from all the big updates they decide to make for a game we wont talk about. But it’s the industry man, the genre is dumb’ing down to appeal to a wider range of folks — hard to get excited.
If your being put in as damage control of an already dying game, good freakin’ luck. You get those gold sellers! tedious stupid nonsense. And bots.. pfft! The solution is simple:
sealed deck bars, stop giving people so many choices.. it only gives them more to bitch about. switch it up every week, rock and roll! Anyways I really just wanted to say Hi Lum;) Good luck.
#47 by Hatch on November 28th, 2009
@geldonyetich
Who makes a budget like that? If my MMO prevents me from going out and blowing a stack of cash one night a month (which it does) it would pay for a couple of accounts and all the RMT I use in that month. Again, if I quit playing it would cost me more money. I know you are crusading to show me the error of my ways but trust me when I tell you that what I am doing makes perfect mathematical and logical sense.
If the game contained no enjoyment, I wouldn’t play it (hi2u age of conan!)
If the game contains enjoyment, trust that I will find a way to isolate it and extract it in its most pure form.
#48 by geldonyetich on November 29th, 2009
@Hatch
I’d like to introduce you to a little thing called GameFly. But, of course, it’s your money. You can spend it however you like.
I’m not bothered at how you spend your money. If you can find a way to strain enjoyment out of a game that’s mostly crap, more power to you.
However, so long as people keep voting with their dollars for mediocre grinds, that’s exactly what MMORPG developers will keep delivering. That you’re paying somebody to play the game for you so you can continue to send the wrong signals to game developers is… well, what would you call that?
#49 by Guy on November 29th, 2009
“However, so long as people keep voting with their dollars for mediocre grinds, that’s exactly what MMORPG developers will keep delivering. That you’re paying somebody to play the game for you so you can continue to send the wrong signals to game developers is… well, what would you call that?”
I have to say Geldo your crusading makes a lot more sense once you make that point.
#50 by Hatch on November 29th, 2009
I do agree with that as well. On the other hand we’ve been squeezing oranges to get orange juice for some time and still have to do it. Sometimes you just have to work with what’s available.