MMOs and the Secondary Market

Didn't sony implement some gold buying program within EQ to try and make some profit off of the illegal, or rather discouraged, profiteering?

I'm all for buying plat, we've bought and sold plat back in the eq days as well. Mike bought his white scale for his bard epic that way. 150k gold for the white scale from one of the german guilds, for the life of me I can't think of their name anymore, but he did it by using an exploit in WW. It was so illegal we closed the blinds when doing it! I kid, but for companies like IGE, I think they rip off people with accounts, but plat is so cheap to buy from them it's too tempting.

Or you could just whore yourself out like chick did in WOW. 5k gold = 1 fuck. Diseases were a perk, apparently. I'd be really interested to see what Runyan has to say about this though. :teehee

Well as far as I know I play my toons well, I used to keep groups all the time even tho I perfered to solo or duo in EQ1 lol

Thing is the less I get to play the more things seem to cost=/ I've got lvl 70 toons and shit in wow and if it were not for Onimi whoreing himself out to get me monies I wouldnt have all my uber waters/fewds and a spiffy flying mount lol plus if it were not for someone else playing my toon and helping me lvl while I was either working or in school allot of old raids wouldnt have happened because they would have been short on my class, in EQ1 my old guild never invited people from other guilds so they would call it =/
so, in the ends I guess I support it.
I don't have any respect for people who ebay and cant play tho lol and lets not forget the lame farmers who train you just to get you to stop killing mobs they want to kill.. that shit is ghey and they dont deserve to be farmers dammit! /report! lol *hides*

but then again .. I am bad =( I am one of those people that ask for new rules just so I can break them =X LOL

i've bought it before.. mainly because i *need* that 4 room acorn...

/cough

uh, in EQ i didnt buy any plat.. ever. i made 100kpp per magelo - you do the math :P i had so much plat, i STILL have so much plat, i couldn't twink anymore. bard epic at lvl 50 (51?) min level whatever that is, full magnetic armor for my bard, sk and warrior and all the coolio rec. level shit that dropped out of WoS, a 70 chanter w/ better gear than i could buy in the bazaar, same w/ cleric.

DAOC = bought plat for houses, only. sad huh.

WoW = bought plat for mounts, only. :x

EQ2 = houses & starter gear

but anymore we're fairly established in all our games so the need to purchase anymore gold is not there. BF does all the broker/bazaar selling. i was gawking at some 10plat weapon, and im like "ha, we can't even afford that with our moneys pooled".. i totally didn't know he had 50plat on an alt :P prolly for good reason.

i am a power gamer and i hate farming gold for hours upon hours. Vanguard would publically humiliate you for buying gold, and only allowed 10 whole items up on the broker merchant. not any way to make good $$ w/o doing tradeskills ( cue stabbing in the throat motion )

i only had like 4g total at 26, and some of that was given to me from a friend.

i suppose i only support it once the market has been mutilated and corrupted by it, but a fresh game, fresh server, its nice to keep the economy even and not so bloated.. i remember when EQ1's wurmslayer was 2000p. it took FOREVER to get that 2kp... i borrowed 1k of it and never paid it back (lol) .. nowadays shit easily sells for 50kp. "shit", the good stuff is 400k or so by now.

Well, I've got to say I feel a bit better about the time that I bought some plat to buy my husband the "fast horse" for his birthday one year. He's sooo hard to buy for... :girlyfai:

Honestly, I felt guilty as hell buying the plat, but my playstyle prohibited me being able to make money, so I had no other way of doing it. Hell, I still have so little money it's totally embarrassing. No bazaar-bought rank2 spells for me, fo sho. I honestly don't care if other people do it, to each their own, and if I can ever get over this Poser addiction I may damn well buy some more! ;)

I'm glad that City of Heroes and City of Villains doesn't have much in the way of an economy yet that can be exploited for profit. Issue 9 may change that with rare recipes and salvage drops being introduced.

You still see people farming and selling influence (equivalent of currency in CoX) on Ebay, or offering power levelling or Hamidon Enhancer's (rare drop power enhancers). But it's plain obvious which Level 50 Heros and Villains have been milk fed to that level. They have no idea how to choose and use their Powersets. It's sad.

I hope that Issue 9 doesn't make CoX like all the other MMO's out on the market. What made this game unique was not having to worry about getting that certain l33t piece of armor, weaponry or spells. Grinding for salvage drops and recipes doesn't sound like fun at all.

If people are going to do it, then so be it. I've never felt the need, but I can see how attractive taking the easy path can be.

When my brother used to play EQ he bought plat a few times. Ive never bought any however.

I dont see anything wrong with it though to be honest.

I could care less, either way, except I wish someone would figure out a way to keep the FREAKING SPAM OUTTA MY CHAT WINDOW!

Time = Money. Either you earn this in the Real World by working or in game farming gold. While I do NOT believe in farmers trampling over the common player to make the gold to sell to others, its still the original equation. I make more money at my RL job than I do in WoW. Thus it makes more sense for me to utilize that to turn it into gold/plat/fishies on a stick.

Of course, I mostly just play Second Life now, where the economy is built around being able to use real cash to buy in game cash. That works for me!

Roz, that's what I was talking about when I mentioned SoE's exchange servers. On certain servers in EQ2 you can go to an SoE sanctioned marketplace and buy and sell for real money.

As to whether or not it's illegal, or merely discouraged...to my knowledge that depends on a few things that still have to be fully proven in this specific context but have been proven in other, similar contexts. 1. Is the end user license agreement (EULA, that thing you click every time you log in) a legally binding contract? And 2. Do the game companies own their virtual property? Game companies will say 'yes' and 'yes', and quite a few lawyers would argue that as well :). But as far as I know there hasn't been a 'for once and all' ruling on that.

And at any rate, naturally if the game companies themselves say that RMT is okay as long as you do it according to our conditions, it's neither illegal nor discouraged :). It's just a sign that the game company in question has given up on having a virtual economy and doesn't give a shit about giving its userbase a fair playing field.

*thinks* I'm a little surprised by the...nonchalant outlook, after seeing quite a bit of heat on this topic :). The general consensus seems to be either "I don't care, and I wouldn't do it" or "I don't care, and I do it sometimes." I guess somewhere along the line I became more invested. I suppose, though, that if you don't think the issue is important, that there aren't really issues of integrity and fair play at stake...that circumvents a lot of angsting :). Unless I'm misunderstanding outlooks.

Well... I am a moral deviant in most things so bear this in mind. I buy plat/gold/items etc a lot. I have zero guilt over doing this type of thing, and really I don't think it's bad at all. Hell, if I had the willpower to I would have dedicated myself to the game like some did back in the day to make a RL living.. However..

I don't like to grind, it's not fun. It bores me. It's one reason I hated raiding. Give me an interesting quest or someplace to stand around and RP. I would rather travel around seeing the world and learning new tradeskills. Oh yes tradeskills..!! *happy sigh* Those take money, so if I want to have fun in the game it's a time vs cost issue. My time's more valuable to me. I play for the game for enjoyment in my spare time (OK I used to.. nowdays almost all my free time is spent playing in 3D programs but ya know what I mean) But I/we decided that to feed the massive equipment and item needs of all of mine and X's alts (ahem alt queen here!) there wasn't enough commissions I could do (or time for them) so buying it was the only option. Did it effect the global economy? Probably but.. I really don't care. Does it make it harder for those who want to be 'pure' and do it themselves? Yeah. Again, I don't care. I'm not trying to be nasty, harsh or unfeeling here. It just isn't my concern. I play games for me, not for the rest of the online population. Trust me I spend enough time fretting over the concerns and troubles of others that I don't need to be doing it for an entire online community too.

I have bought in game plat and items to give to RL friends as birthday/x-mas presents. And they loved it. That made me happy. I would have spent XXX dollars anyways, be it a tangible item or a virtual one what's the difference?

Back in EQ, I used to REALLY hate this and felt it was cheating if people were paying to have an easier gaming experience because it did impact the players around 'em. (The worst part was when someone would sell their character and you'd see the person in the game, not knowing who it really is and feel sort of betrayed if you used to have a rapport with said person. Kind of like the legendary Nizzmo selling his character -- the guy that made all those gnome dance videos? I don't that he ever did that, but it would diminish his legend if someone took him over.) Y'know, like a pebble creating ripples in the pond.

Six years later, I no longer care because it's still just a game and it's an issue that won't ever really go away. I do appreciate when gaming companies make an effort to slow down the flow of RL cash, but I don't think it's something they can completely eradicate. :/

hrmm i missed this Thread.. lol