Time for MMO companies to collaborate against RMT/gold-selling (for Anet!)

Yeah, let's ruin whatever we have in the game so that we can drive goldsellers out of business, hooray!

And please don't try to say "People only buy vanities in GW so selling in-game gold is fine", guess what, the only things people in WoW would need gold for are VANITIES (mounts, epic mounts, flying mount, epic flying mounts). You CAN'T buy the best equipment in WoW no matter how much gold you have. (Unless you count paying some 24 people to raid for you and let you loot the items as "buying equipments")

Gold sellers/power lvl make money off of MMos and MMos make money off the gold sellers. They want it to stop?

Let me remind the few people that defend RMT or try to draw dishonest parallels of the conditions of some of the RMT employees (if you want to talk about HYPOCRISY, talk about supporting an industry that exploits poorly paid and trated Asian workers and the addiction of MMO players!):
http://www.mmobux.com/articles/746/i...rmers-in-china
Another interesting read from the most successful Chinese MMO (this is to illustrate the very sad and unfair consequences of legalising RMT, and btw it's not because life is unfair with poors that we have to dismiss this point):
http://www.danwei.org/electronic_gam...away_in_zt.php

Anyway, let's close this door that was more like a troll moment than a moment of deep truth. (it's funny, I though that to be trolling like this you'd either have to be a gold-buyer, a gold-seller or an anarchist who likes to mess with people)

Back to topic: no one believes that an industry-wide action would help?

I think that hallomik made the strongest point with the cigarette ban (the UK actually realised since last year that the consequences of excessive alcohol drinking leads to billions of sterling pound of damage control, cleaning and other accidents management, which obviously adds to the physical and psychological impact of binge drinking), i.e. that if enough pressure is put collectively, not only from the government but because people accept it, there great results can be achieved.

I think that people don't really care until it touches them directly. Several people were very correct to highlight Blizzard's statement that RMT harms the gameplay of non-gold-buying players and is linked to the undergroung hacking market (this is the worst part, you end up being part of illegal money trafficing which is also linked to those horrendous and disguting markets of child and women abuse). We need to make people aware of the indirect consequences for them. As reported by RTSFirebat, this (and duping) is the reason why the high-end tier of GW's economy is MAD. (exactly like the high-end tier of professional football in European countries ... can you imagine one guy paid in one day more than what you earn in one year? and little kids in Asia paid 0.01$ a day for 12h of exhausting work? sorry for the off-tracking again)

So what are the MMO companies waiting for?

Wrong analysis (and surely in this thread, MMO companies are not talking, we customers are): RMT costs money to MMO companies. It's the old discussion of "Does banning bots bring additional revenue to Anet?"

It costs more money to ensure a fair game in the sense of the EULA.

Do people forget that MMOs are GAMES created for FUN? Where's the fun in a game where money can buy you everything?

So anyone for a "No RMT in my MMO" label and the CMCAR (Coallition of MMO Companies against RMT)?

They aren't waiting for anything. They have better things to do with thier time than try to push a snowball up a never ending hill.

Short of selling gold them selves at such a low rate than the ebay based companies can compete with. There is nothing they can do which will be affective. Its a fact of life, no system is perfect and every system has a way around it, which people will find.

EDIT: Fixed spelling mistakes.

I would support that. It's a form of democratic GM, like GWG's moderators. Of course impossible in GW1 without significant effort that Anet won't make, but may be in GW2?

(I'd even introduce meta-moderators to moderate moderators, as is done on Slashdot.org, it would be necessary at first to make sure that this police squad would agree on rules, since Anet can't really fix the rules of something so subjective); Slashdot.org karma system would work great too, by ensuring that this police squad is not always made up of the same people)

Your wording is not very clear, so I might be confused as to your point, but it seems you're drawing a parallel between the government imposing a smoking ban on the public and the MMO makers lashing out at the farmers.

If that's the case, it's not a very good comparison. A government leverages its power by virtue of the fact that it maintains an armed force which can coerce people into following its rules. Companies are limited to battling each other within the confined of local, provincial, and national laws and trade agreements and the like. The only way that the MMOs could impact the gold farmers in China in a manner similar to your example would be if the MMOs can somehow lean on the Chinese government to clamp down on the process (or get their own governments to do it for them).

Stopping RMT from places like China runs into the same problems as the wider problem of piracy in those areas: unless the governments of the nation involved is willing to cooperate with the victims of the criminal activity - and often they're not - there's little you can do to outright FORCE a change in behavior.

Imperfection should not prevent anyone from trying to do better, should it?

It was said nowhere in this thread that perfection is the aim. Rather than MMO companies (well I'm currently the only saying it ) should step up and do better, join in the common fight against RMT.

I know that some company won't see it the same way, as highlighted for EVE and Sony. But yet, they'll realise as Blizzard did that the downside of the having RMT is that it is linked to the underground hacking and credit card fraud communities.

Actually, I've said numerous times that this wouldn't work with GW, as they are too far down the road. The resentment it would engender in those who got their armor/items the hard way would be immense. I'm just using Anet and GW as an example of how it could be implemented since this is one of the few MMO's I currently play.

Saying it can't work, at all, ever, is also blatantly false, since Grando Espada and Everquest 2 implement this in some form. The point about rampant inflation is probably somewhat valid, though an inevitable cap will happen, since people are spending real money, not duped ambraces.

I would, however, say that allowing almost all IG items (all armors, all weps, no rare/crafting mats etc) to be traded for RL cash and make them customized and unsalvagable (basically like /bonus items) probably makes better sense. Minipets could be available but are dedicated immediately.

Again, this isn't going to happen in GW1, nor should it, I'm just using it's terms and items as an example of how this could be done in a new game.

EDIT: I should add that this can only work in a game like GW, where armor art or "elite" weapons etc gain you no substantial advantage in game play. I forget this isn't the case in most MMO's, since my background is substantially SP-RPG.

EDIT 2 : I also think we should be drawing a distinction between blackmarket RMT and RMT in general. RMT as implemented by Sony and EVE doesn't harm people. Goldsellers are little better than slavers.

No, I was talking about gold-sellers.

The first paragraph above answers the second one, and it's actually what forced the Chinese government to introduce the law against staying too long in front of computers: become it harmed the gaming companies (not MMO) and they successfully lobbied.

That's why I'm here pointing at a lobby of MMO companies. Obvisouly, this won't happen easily, not until the RMT threat gets too big for the vast majority of them.

Or the consumer pressure gets bigger. (exactly like Microsoft and the security issues)

Interestingly, there already is an effort to form a PAC in the games industry: The Video Games Industry Goes Political

I think MMOs are such a big part of the picture that they wouldn't even need their own PAC, they could probably wield significant influence in this one - especially Blizzard and SOE.

I'm not sure about how it works in EQ2, but Granado Esprada uses an item mall system (and somehow allow the items to be traded in-game; something most other item mall-based games don't allow), and such business model is based on "whoever rich in real life can buy better items" already. Doing something like this in such game of course won't hurt it.

I don't know about anyone else. But I don't like the item mall-based free2play business model one bit. With that said, I don't think I'm going to like "real world money for in-game currency"-based business model either.

And judging from the popularity of these kind of game (i.e. non-existent anywhere outside asia), I don't think I'm the only one.

Oh, an exception would be Project Entropia and maybe Second Life? But those games have something normal MMORPGs don't, so I don't think they count.

To know that, you must examine gold buyer:

Buying ingame gold for reall money means that you take game seriously ... seriously enough to push it past just leisure activity. Or that you are filthy rich IRL. Or that you are spoiled brat with CC.

Any of that means that you will buy everything official you can: Campaigns, account enhancements, you name it. You release it, he buys it without thinking twice. Perfect customer. Maybe even has multiple accounts. Accounts for whole family? Who knows how hardcore he is... Also, once you make commitment of buying egold, canceling subscription becomes harder to justify.

Basically, by disabling him access to easy egold you are saying NO to business from him ... and he is good business.

Its quite logical to care more about customer that pays you more. Maybe it turns out that ebayers are best customers and people who complain about egold are not really worth it.

Seriously, what did WoW do? It put webpage there to make anti-ebay person happy by confirming what he knew to be true (bad, bad, wicked farmers.). That seems just like cheap pacifier if you think about it. Its not like anyone who does ebay would pay any attention to it.

Who knows?

The cost-benefit calculation is fairly easy, isn't it? He and his gold-buying friends have, say, 2% of buying power with regards to Anet's income.

And RMT leads to CC fraud which is worth probably more by itself. And there's the added cost of banning RMT accounts, appeasing and educating the general population, as Blizzard did. And if Blizzard, with its 40% profit margin, then it probably means that it's even more important for all MMO companies.

Of course there's a short vs. long term calculation comparison I'm escaping here.

Blizzard, last year, took a LOT of steps to stop RTMs in WoW. They swung a very heavy ban hammer at a very large number of both botters and buyers, they put some heavy restrictions on chat, and they invested heavily in anti-exploit and anti-botting fixes. I went back to WoW for a month after they reduced the leveling times (and promptly realized that knocking something down 30% that was 500% screwed up wasn't a big deal... but I digress) and there was a HUGE difference in the amount of spamming.

One group, in fact, infamously had to go so far to get around the fixes to "advertise" in Orgrimmar that they got a bunch of gnomes together and had them killed in a way that their corpses spelled out the website on the ground.

If you want to see what happens when a company appears to be uninterested or unable to stop the botters and sellers, check out Turbine's Lord of the Rings Online. You can't be in Bree for more than five minutes before a new bot is spamming the chat channel, and you generally get multiple spams in your in game mail every week. LOTRO is a game where the botting and RMTs are truly out of control, and are really ruining the in-game economy. My guild was able to provide its own weaponry and armor to its members, which was fortunate because to keep your guy effectively equipped you almost had to spend your money in the auction house as fast as you could get it thanks to the inflation that was going on.

Possibly, or maybe most companies haven't clocked just how lucrative a system it can be

I think a game like GW is a prime example of where an item-mall type system would work, since it's really only about the flash, not the function of the item.

I should clarify that I feel the most practical way of implementing RMT is via an "non-tradeable items for RL cash" system. A "gold for RL cash" system could be made to work, but it would require massive upkeep and oversight.

The main reason I feel RMT should be integrated is that it will pretty much immediately kill the goldsellers.

As an example :

Buy FoW set for char from IG store: £50

Buy ectos + crafting mats etc for FoW set from goldseller : £35

Who's going to take the risk of loosing their account for £15? Certainly not anyone sensible, especially as the RMT income would allow Anet to step up their policing of trades etc.

EDIT: I wouldn't have anything in the store that couldn't be acquired by normal playing either, except minipets.

It could be something like that. But my idea (may be commercially not viable) is a gathering of forces on the issue of RMTs, possibly combined on lobbying to put pressure on some Asian countries. Like the big blacklisting databse for spam filters or similar systems used for CC.

LOL, you want NC-Soft to shut out about 60% of their customers?
Germany,Scandinavia, Polen,Korea, Taiwan, Japan and China is east if Luxembourg, might aswell turn of GW in the US, that would get ride of 90% of the stupid complaints and close the "big market" for gold sellers.

That would Kill GW2 before it even was released if they implement in-game moderators.

How many times have I heard this on Slashdot before the Big Sweep? Countless times, because people were afraid of abuse. The result was brilliant as people got rid of trolls, aggressive commenters and other deluded people.

I can't promise it'll work, but I can tell you it has helped a lot on many occasion.

And by the way, the problem does not lie with the existence of such police squad, but rather in the power that it has.