RMT vs. Gift-giving

I see no problems with it. I had a friend that tried Lusternia the other day, and I hooked her up with equipment with a few thousand gold. Now, sure we roleplayed it (which other games don’t require), but I just gave away a bunch of stuff that they could have very well paid me five bucks for, or something like that. Just the same as I could have run to a nexus and dumped all of the items in it (effectively deleting them). I don’t really see how this hurts anyone at all, and as far as I know (and feel free to correct me Matt) the only reason it’s really not allowed in IRE games (selling items or characters for RL money) is because it’s out of character to do so.

And if we’re going to talk about gold farming on WoW, or something like that, Blizzard doesn’t even sell gold to players, and I see it as driving even more people to them, and creating more business/players for them. Maybe the person who buys gold from these websites doesn’t have a lot of time, so they purchase gold from them so they can keep playing the game like they want to (almost like a third-party credit purchase). Again, unless it’s a game where roleplaying is enforced, “encouraged”, or required, I think it’s nothing but a boon for the game itself.

Usually when you raise this argument, most people stop trying to use this as an attack on RMTs. Most of the argument really comes from whether or not an activity is disruptive to the game experience (i.e. honest people can’t get what they need due to gold farmers hogging the kills, gold farmers theoretically increasing the money supply causing inflation, etc).

Now, I’ve taken some lumps for supporting the idea of RMT. So, keep that in mind while i give these explanations. I’m not the most emotional defender here.

Anyway, one typical answer is that Player B didn’t “earn” it while Player A has to go camp for several hours or whatever. Yeah, I think that’s BS, too. But, some people think this goes against their basic sense of “fairness” as it applies to the game. People should have to invest lots of time, not lots of money.

A more sophisticated answer is that the behaviors of Player A to earn the items/gold to sell to Player B can be disruptive to Player C. Let me give an anecdote from World of Warcraft:

In Stranglethorn Vale, there were some creatures that dropped an item called a “broken electro-lantern“. These items were uncommon drops, but they sold for a considerable amount of in-game money to NPCs and dropped frequently enough that you made significantly more money by gathering these items.

One quest in the Stranglethorn Vale zone requires you to kill the NPCs that could drop these lanterns. When I was doing this quest, there were several higher level characters in the area killing the NPCs as quickly as they spawned. True to the “Chinese Gold Farmer” stereotype, they didn’t respond to our requests to stop killing them so we could finish our quest. My group finally was able to finish the quest (mostly because we’re experienced players and were physically together so we could shout instructions), but it took significantly longer than it otherwise should have.

Blizzard did eventually “nerf” the price NPCs buy the lanterns for, eliminating this problem.

There are reports of other such behaviors, though. People who ninja loot in order to sell the items, for example. Or, people that are simply rude to other people to scare them away from a good hunting spot. These behaviors impact Player C and make the game a bit less fun if they run into Player A. This is what Player A does for a living, after all, and they get cranky when they can’t do their job. Imagine how much it would irritate you if people came by your desk at work and mashed the keys on your keyboard just because they thought it was “fun”, even though you were working on a document due by the end of the day.

Compare this with a casual gift from Player A to Player B. Player A isn’t motivated to go out and be an asshole to people in order to get the items to give to Player B, so it doesn’t impact Player C.

Of course, many games these days have instancing, where you could go and kill monsters to your heart’s content without bothering anyone else. Therefore this issue can have less impact on people.

Some explanation, I hope.

Just thinking about it, the thought could be that it harms Player C if he is not as willing to spend additional ‘real’ resources on the game. If the supply is semi-limited and becomes tied up in RMTs, it then becomes even more difficult than it would have been for Player C to buy it via in-game currency, because while the supply doesn’t change much, the supply available for in-game currency drops, thereby driving the price up.

One could draw some serious comparisons between the RMT/anti-RMT crowd and WoW’s casual/hardcore crowd in that respect.. but we won’t go there.

I think it has alot to do about why people play. The apeal for me is in escapism. I play games to get away from real life, if but momentarily. The idea that you can grind, that you can put time and effort into the game and have it matter. IRL you spend lots of time, lots of effort to end up in some dead-end job and get nowhere while someone born into a rich family/has money breezes through. The idea of playing a mmorpg and actually progressing with effort is what alot of people are after(or maybe just me, i don’t think i’m alone though). When someone who has money to spare buys a lvl baggillion maxxed out character, that just bursts my fantasy bubble and reminds me of unfairness as in RL.

However, I can see on the other side of the coin as well. I can see not wanting to spend way too many hours just to see the end content of the game. Since the end of the game is often made the “funnest”, usually through skills/items/quests that are only available to higher levels. Alot of the time you can spend minimal amount of money($5-$10) to buy something that would otherwise take maybe 20-30 hours of your time (I don’t play mmorpgs any more, not sure if this is still true(take everything i say with a grain of salt)).

I guess I just want to be rewarded for effort since I don’t get that in RL.

For the people who purchase items/want the experience, build a mmorpg in which you can max out your char in an hour. Have all the fun in a whole lot of high level quests/raids. You can buy items but you can’t buy the experience of playing with friends/clan/guild.

For the people who want to put effort/time into the game to climb the virtual ladder, make a mmorpg with lots of character customization in skills. Focos on leveling istead of transferables (items/gold), be able to customize/level up/add stats to items so that they are usefull to you but will most likely not fit the build of another character. Of course you’ll still have people selling off their old characters and i have no real solution to that.

“…make a coherent argument…”
Oops, i’ll stop rambling now, sorry -.-

Keep in mind that we’re talking about the demand side of the equation here, not the supply side. The behavior of gold farmers has nothing to do with this argument. Assume that player A is me and player B is my mother. (Neither of us are gold farmers.)

What is the point in trying to talk about RMT buyers without considering RMT suppliers? They are mutually dependent. RMT suppliers produce in-game objects much more ‘efficiently’ than your mother does (i.e. with less average time investment). The economic motivation also causes them to do it on a much larger scale. Together, these two factors lead to RMT transactions potentially having much bigger impact on in-game economies, general player enjoyment, etc.

But as a player of MMORPGs, I don’t mind that much… the poor fools who pay $100 for a hard-to-get item deserve to be parted from their money. (Even if it was a perfectly rational time/money tradeoff on their part, all the MMORPGs I’ve ever seen were much too shallow to deserve that level of investment. With that kind of money OR time, I’d rather rent a dozen movies or buy a couple good books.)

As I commented on Damion’s blog the difference between the two “outside magic cirlce” examples lies with the connections that ties the actors of the transaction together.

The powergamer friend enhances a social bond which is a significant “inside the magic circle” type of thing by giving ph4t l00t to a newbi friend. The newbi friend is “supposed to return some favor in the future” as an unwritten contract which is established by the gift. The powergamer also takes a stand for his newbi friend in kindof like an official sponsor. This is important for how the social structures of the game world works.

The RMT buyer sever the connection to the supplier by momentarily paying off any obligation with RL$$. This is more akin to how the real world works but it leaves the formation of social systems to build through different type of toolkit. When an MMO is built and operational its important to not wiggle and waggle between these different methods of social engineering, you will have some of both but the proportions need to remain relatively steady or at least project reasonably predictably.

Okay, let me try a bad analogy: Is there a moral difference between the person who grows his own pot plant and gives a little bit to his friends for personal use, and the person who grows large quantities of pot and sells it to everybody? The latter guy is a businessman who gets Real Cash Money(tm) for the transaction, where the former guy was just being nice to a friend. Is there any moral difference at all? If so, is it a difference in degree or in kind? Now compare with: one person who gives an in-game drop to his in-game friend, vs. another person who farms large quantities of in-game drops and sells them to everybody for Real Cash Money(tm). Drug dealers don’t necessarily ruin lives, but they have some negative effects on the society they are supplying. RMT farmers have similar negative effects on in-game communities. I think *that* difference is definitely one of degree, not kind.

Matt wrote:
…but my post actually specifically said that my question was about demand-side not supply-side….

Yes, but as moo points out, the demand drives the need for the supply; if B didn’t want what A was selling, then it wouldn’t impact C at all. That’s Econ 101. Plus, the supply-side example shows why gifting is generally accepted while RMT is bad, bad, bad. As I said:

“Compare this with a casual gift from Player A to Player B. Player A isn’t motivated to go out and be an asshole to people in order to get the items to give to Player B, so it doesn’t impact Player C.”

Arguing that RMT is bad because some supply-siders are jerks is like arguing that PvP is bad because some PvPers are jerks, imho.

The “not wanting to play with (emotionally) 12-year-old sociopaths” complaint is a common criticism of PvP. Many people don’t want to have to deal with jerks in their games, so this complaint as it relates to RMT and PvP isn’t entirely meaningless. Does it mean we should never put RMT or PvP into our games? No, but game developers need to realize that doing so is going to upset some people that don’t feel like dealing with assholes.

And, again, I’m probably not the best defender of the anti-RMT stance. Honestly, if the gold farmers had been smart enough to stay in instances I probably wouldn’t have cared one bit about RMT in WoW.

Isn’t that like saying there’s something fundamentally wrong with soccer because Zinedine headbutted an opposing player in the World Cup final?

Not really, because he was given a red card for that act which likely caused France to lose that match. Now, you might say there’s something fundamentally wrong with soccer it didn’t have a system of punishments for this type of behavior. The goal of the red card is to remove the motivation to break the rules in order to “win”, just as the goal of restricting RMT in most games is to remove a motivation to be a complete ass to people in order to make the gold to sell.

Further thoughts,

How is A who will sell his gold to B so that B can finally buy their epic mount any different than A who is camping the mobs I need for my quest just so A can buy their own epic mount?

Person A might as well be the same jerk in both examples. The gold farmers might even be better than the other option, because at least the RMT farmer is willing to make the same deal with C as he did with B, meanwhile the anti-RMT will tell C to “Lrn2Farm noob”!

Actually, it’s two separate issues - twinking and RMT. RMT being (in my opinion) a subset of twinking.

Is twinking (using one character to improve another) in general a bad thing? I’m actually of the opinion that it’s not bad, but it shouldn’t be NECESSARY. Many of the games tend to have points which are boring grinds. “Killing Rats” (for a variety of rat-types) are staples of more MMO then I care to think about, but it’s the most common new CHARACTER experience. Character creation USUALLY isn’t boring - the problem arises with the process of getting to the “good stuff”. Even if it’s not boring the first time, the fifth time it’s painful it’s actually deadly to a game. (This, by the way, is my main argument against permadeath.) So if there’s a way to get past the grind (buffing the character, power leveling, etc.) the player will take it in a heartbeat.

There are only two major ways to get twinked - to have one of your “elder” characters give you things, or have someone ELSE give you things. And, of course, that second option is what leads to RMT.

eBay being the first major business to profit from it, it’s spread to various smaller specialty sites, and (in some cases) to the folks that run the game itself - and THERE lies the problem, as perceived from the player’s point of view - and our problem as well.

“Did you earn it, or just BUY it?” Ever play with someone running an eBay purchased account? Or a newbie that’s been PL’d to the heights? It sucks. They won’t know the game, nor how to interact with others in a team. It’s a level of incompetence that’s just astounding. “Dev Santioned” RMTwinks are when we don’t just admit that we’re not doing this for the love of gaming. There is a word for it, and the punchline goes “We know what you are - now we’re negotiating price.” Yes, we all are. But you really do need standards, and lines you won’t cross.

The PROBLEM is that there are things that the ONLY way to get them is to be one of the 1% that either stumbled across something, power-gamed to the top and managed to be the 1% of THAT that’s truly uber, or…. eBay. (Castle in UO anyone?)

Besides, if GameDev sells stuff RMT style, that REDUCES the number of people that get in game to EARN them - which may mean less bandwidth, but it also means less accounts… And less profit.

Should RMT be EULA’d? Should it be bannable (our only real recourse)? I’d like to say “yes” but the reality is until we can make games where it’s not the MORE FUN TO BUY IT ON eBAY WITH VISA, it’s a reality we’ll have to live with.

Bryce, sure.

But.

What do MMO providers sell? Gametime. Whatif you allowed the sale of gametime, purchased by a player, for in-game currency? Wouldn’t that minmise the inflationary effect, and allot both Joe Catassbutnomoney and John Richbutlittletimetoplay to be happy?

Well, yes. As well as crushing the value of the market for the game’s currency OUTSIDE those deals by a factor of FIFTEEN. In a game where gear is critically important, beyond WoW’s wildest dreams.

That game being… Eve Online

Best bit is allowing the sale of ETC for ISK wasn’t even INTENDED to have that effect, it just did.

Andrew, you’re trying to wiggle through it, and I’m not buying it. Sorry. All you’re suggesting is some other way to RMT via the game mechanism, and that’s not a good idea. In fact, I suspect that several of my online friends that like costumes and ALTs more than power statistics in CoH would be on the phone to support quite often trying to figure out why they suddenly can’t log in…

Gametime isn’t the goods themselves. It’s ACCESS to the OPPORTUNITY to a VARIETY of goods.

My point really isn’t that RMT of an in-game good isn’t good or bad. It’s when Devs get involved that it gets dangerous. Need gold? They sell it. Need armor? They sell that. Need to level up? They sell that. Want to get someone that annoys you out of the game? They sell that.

It’s all the government you can afford.

I’d rather it be eBay than the GameDev, simpley because I believe we should keep the lines we don’t cross farther away from things that really DO make us whores, rather than the fine quality courtesans I believe we should be.

As for Eve, I LOVE the concept (wow, not another S&S game!) and much of the execution. I’ve passed it by because of lack of time coupled with some of the horror stories I’ve heard (Yes, they’re the exception to the rule. The war with the use of “The Biggest Bomb Ever recently has me intrigued, I admit.)

My point is that selling gametime is NOT the same as selling directly game-altering services.

Face it, banning RMT does not stop it. It creates a shady situation where players get riped off, IGE can persuade people to empty guild coffers (and shortly afterwards the guild membership list), and so on.

Eve has smashed that market in favour of a clearly stated bargain which has NOT proven inflationary.

Perhaps Ebay would be preferable. But if there is a general ban in place, then Eve’s example can help find the path.

As for gameplay, I can’t defend CCP and I won’t try. I have a 40 million SP character which I’m keeping, mind you…although I certainly don’t play like I did when I was a student.

Ah! I understand.

Agreed - Banning isn’t the answer.

I think we can agree that the answer is to make it more FUN to earn the things we want/need in game, rather then NEED the things so bad that we have to eBay for them.

I want to stop the disease (to over-metaphor) of needs exceeding means rather the symptoms (RMT being the symptom, for anyone that just browsed.)

Damn - I had to reread your post before I got it. I hate reading something the wrong way!

Getting gametime for in game goods… Hmm… Might be mostly handy for the customer that pays by gamecard instead of auto-debiting a Credit Card. Does it break the imersion too much?

I don’t think I have a strong enough opinion of that. Going to have to let it stew a while.

I do believe that while it might lessen in-game currancy inflation, it would probably set a price for in-game currency to the dollar. If it’s 30 days for 300k of ‘gold’ then why would you pay more then that on eBay?

…and (last post I swear - at least for today) I was curious about the “exchange rate” - ebay lists it at about 10,000,000 ISK = $1 so I’m guessing 30 days is about 150,000,000 ISK (I assume that’s a lot.)

http://myeve.eve-online.com/ingameboard.asp?a=topic&threadID=340653&page=2 reveals that buying GameTime with ISK is more of a shadowmarket, however, then you think.

No, that’s more an example of someone who didn’t understand the mood of the community. Incidentally, the mod locked it for a “rule” which does not exist. This is common on the Eve forums.

Tbh its rather silly - the profits you can make from Eve are pretty small compared to RMT in other games precisely because of GMT’s and the ISK “value” crash on Ebay.

Matt wrote:

“Thanks BugHunter - my point exactly. What people are objecting to is behavior that SOME people who engage in RMT engage in, not RMT itself.”
——————————————————————————–

Make no mistake, professional gold farmers are among the worst citizens on your server. To illustrate my point, I’ll use examples from WoW:

1.) I have seen them take a critical item that everybody needs (mana potions), and buy out the entire auction house of that item. They then turn around and re-sell that same item at vastly jacked up prices. They will remain logged in and checking the auction house 24 hours a day to make sure nobody gets a “real” price on mana potions. The 24 hour part is the part that’s hard for a “real” player to duplicate.

2.) Teleport hacks and “reset” workarounds in Dire Maul. These guys used them en-masse to warp to the boss mobs, get a quick kill, and then reset the instance to get another boss mob kill in 10 minutes. Definately threw WoW’s economy out of whack.

3.) Farming Mooncloth. Here is a resource needed by tons of players, that could only be farmed in certain spots. The gold farmers were doing anything they could to monopolize those spots. Once again, they were there 24 hours a day, doing everything they could to make sure they had ALL the spawns.

Simply put, our virtual world would be a better place without the lure of cash in it.

“Simply put, our virtual world would be a better place without the lure of cash in it. ”

Without the lure of other people getting real cash…

Okay. Followup question then: How do we keep the lure cash (RMT) out of the game?

I’m not sure what the “in game” answer would be, but it’s easy to track these guys down from all the spam they generate. If game companies really went after these guys they could make an impact. Sadly, they’ve been slacking.

TheeNickster,

Each of your examples illustrates behavior of the player base that is not RMT farmers as well. The regular players who are trying to get gold for repair bills or epic mounts do the exact same things you mention. The “gold farmers” are better behaved because they are willing to distibute the wealth to anyone who will pay for it, but the regular players won’t. The only thing that makes the “gold farmers” worse is the spam.

BugHunter wrote:

The “gold farmers” are better behaved because they are willing to distibute the wealth to anyone who will pay for it, but the regular players won’t. The only thing that makes the “gold farmers” worse is the spam.
—————————————————————————

While it’s true that players sometimes act like gold farmers, they aren’t on 24 hours a day. Eventually you can get your camp if your competing with “normal” players. When a group of gold farmers decides to monopolize mooncloth, they will stoop to any cheap tactic to control the entire area. Things like using mage AoE’s to “tag” a mob your going after. Normal players may do that, but most won’t.

While we’re on the subject, the spam does sucketh! I think we’re getting a little TOO realistic with our economic sim here!

Matt:

You can see the same character on 24 hours a day, but he’s being played by diffferent people. They work that character in shifts, like a store. My experiences involving gold farmers have been overwhelmingly negative. Reading other accounts in the wild wooly web leads me to believe that my experiences are fairly typical.

Yes, it is the tactics I’m objecting too, but those tactics are pretty uniform for the professional gold farmer.

Hi Lucy! Photo I received! Thanks!