Real-money transactions in MMOs?

I came across this article at the MMORPG website about RMTs. Unless I am misunderstanding this, it looks like Sony, Funcom, etc., are looking to legitimize and manage these kinds of transactions.

For myself, I really cannot imagine paying real money for a virtual item, but it is an interesting concept. What do you think about this?

i think its definately a bad idea, defies the point of a "competitive" online game.

instead of the person who has the most skill wins, its the person with the biggest bank balance

Personally I prefer the idea of paying for more ingame content over the subscription model. I'd rather pay for what content I actually need and will use, rather than paying monthly for content I'm never going to touch.

But there's defintely a line. I'd love to see downloadable packs that come with new missions, weapons, armour, etc, for a small fee. But when it gets to a point where you're paying for every single little item in the game, including more ammo or whatever, then it's just going too far.

We've seen that become a problem in games before, but it doesn't necessarily have to be. Guild Wars for example has the perfect set up to allow for this kind of thing, since everything is always balanced. The BMP gave those who bought it new content and new weapons, but aside from the skins they aren't any better than regular weapons.

I'm not really sure why so many people get up in arms over micro transactions. Sometimes they are handled poorly, but I think they can usually work pretty well. They're basically just mini expansion packs.

But I think this is not referring to in-game content but to specific items and armor. Like I have an "ABC Uber Sword of Pwning" and want to sell it to another player for real money, that kind of thing.

One could, presumably, craft a rare item and sell it to another player for real money.

Ungh, those two companies are such, [email protected] sellouts...

And yeah, the article isn't referring to purchasing "in-game content." That is something that we're pretty much already doing. It's talking about buying in-game items. It's comparable to me saying "oh man I want that Fiery Dragon Sword so much but I don't want to farm for it. I guess I'll just pay for it."

And that is something that is B-A-D.

From the article:

"During his interview, Smedley told us that gold farming is the number one reason people give for leaving SOE games."

______________________

I lol'd. More lies from that pimple on gamings ass.

LOL I missed that.

Why, exactly?

In a game where no advantage is conferred by having specific equipment, it doesn't matter how people get items. It's actually more logical, since minimum wage tends to beat the best farmer in terms of gold prices. It becomes a slight problem when equipment makes a bigger difference, but then I'd ask why you're playing that kind of game and expecting it to be competitively fair.

It's not like farming for an extended period of time to get something is somehow more respectable than forking over RL cash. Neither one makes you any better at the game.

One of my first thoughts was how might this affect in-game economies? If I find a rare item in a dungeon, would I sooner sell it for real money through the RMT "dealer" or on the in-game AH for virtual gold?

I would think that "legitimizing" such transactions would mean the very best items would be posted on the RMT site and that players who did not want to pay real money for items would be at a disadvantage.

I hope ArenaNet doesn't hook up on this idea -- or Blizzard.

But it still unballances economy, which hurts players who do NOT ebay gold.

Example: Say I ebayed 1mil gold and bought Sup Vigors for all my heroes on all my chars. Result: Trader prices go up by few K.

When you have huge caste of people who can afford to pay high prices (aka, which buy gold), most desirable items will have such high prices and that can actually mean disadvantage on market of rare semi-esentials (30hp upgrades and similar perfect mods.).

Sure, people who dont ebay would be fine using items that are one point off, but it is not like they would do it by choice.

I'm referring less to Guild Wars and more to other MMO's in general. I guess using the FDS was a bad example, it'd probably be best to replace it with "Vengeful Gladiator's Greatsword."

High prices also means when you get things as drops, they're worth significantly more. I made more money from farming/questing when prices were higher.

In a game like Guild Wars where you can get a top-tier geared character set up for very little, higher prices then just give you more returns on what you find. It only really affects you if you're trying to get vanity stuff (and max mods/runes really do count as vanity more than anything, in PvE).

This is generally the reason why I don't really care a whole lot about bots and gold-sellers in Guild Wars. Of course, it's also the reason why Guild Wars is so boring for me now.

True, i was living of "100k + ecto" trades too ... (gotta love early factions days and price tags on perfect r8 zodiacs ).

And vanity items can have any pricetag, no need (and no point) to lower prices for then, agreed. But i don't agree that max mods are vanity in PvE.

Its a complicated matter. Usually games with cash shops have the drop rates so low, that an average player can never stuff suitable for his level. So, apart from a few hardcore elite, all people must pay to get decent gear. This is bad.

But, in other side, some people - like me - have work, family, real life friends, etc.. and simply dont have enough time to farm the stuff they need. Whats the big deal if I throw some coin to get some shinies? Ive already paid for extra slots and some unlocks so what? Time is money, so If I can pay cash to save my precious time of gaming, so be it.

If wanted FoW badly, but didnt have ingame resources to do it, I would pay for that a price that could fit my pocket. But thats not the case. Fortunatelly GW is not item-xp-driven like most titles of the market.

Increasing drop rates would be simpler solution, but some players are motivated purely by the challenge, making this would take from them the sense of accomplishment they get when they reach a difficult objective.

Smuggling and all forms of illegal trade happen mostly when:

- People cant have normal access to the item: like drugs or a rare imports
- The official product is too expensive

If ANet, or another company, makes items with easy access and/or fair prices on cash shops, bot market will go down to minimum levels.

In GW it would be easy to implement this system, without hurting too much the economy. Just make all cash shop items customized.

I approve cash shops as long they save my time and doesnt take the fun from other players.

If they only made a couple of armor sets available, say, for purchase, I'd be worried that we'd all of a sudden see a whole horde of people wearing Obsidian armor that they bought for $10 a piece. One thing I always loved about GW is that certain armors just show people that you've worked harder and/or gotten luckier, rather than "I used mom's credit card to get this armor, look at me!"

Totally a horrid idea to introduce into the game for the playerbase, great idea for them to make a bunch of money easy, but really introduces just more problems than good

Not necessarily. As long as they don't do, say, the MapleStory model and essentially make it IMPOSSIBLE to do anything in the game without devoting your entire life (literally, I see people in the cafeteria at school playing this game for hours on end nonstop) to the game, and simply provide a few extra cool things that you can get that don't unbalance the game, it can be a good source of alternate revenue.

That's the key, though. You have to balance between the players who will play for free and the players who are willing to pay extra for stuff, without tilting the scale either to the free players (no one will pay for anything, so you make no money; seeing Dungeon Runners add in-game ads is a sign to me) or to the paid players (games like MapleStory and Rappelz are TECHNICALLY playable without paying for anything extra, but it takes SOOOOOOOO LONG to flat out earn the stuff in game that you can buy for cheap.)

I really wonder how many bought elite sets of armour with bought gold.I know there are number that have mainly FoW sets.

It's not like it's hard to get away with...