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

You realized that games with item mall are TOTALLY free to play, as in, you don't even need to pay for the box to start playing, right?

Do you really believe a game similar to GW where you can get by with the entire game WITHOUT BUYING ANY VANITIES would work with such system?

Most item mall-based games share one thing in common: the gameplay mechanic always, always ensure that players will eventually FEEL THE NEED to buy something from the item mall. For example (and this is from my hand-on experience with many games of this kind).-

- VERY limited storage (item mall has storage & inventory expansions for sale)

- Either Repetitive equipment crafting system (think GW-crafting, with crafting levels that can be raised only by repeatedly crafting something even though you don't want to use IN ORDER TO craft the better gears which require higher levels) WITH extremely LOW MARTERIAL DROP RATE (you're lucky enough to find the mats for 1 piece of gear. But fear not! You can buy crafting materials from the item mall!) OR

- Effectiveness of equipments is based on how many times you enhance it, with lower and lower success rate the more times you do it (the item mall has 100% success stone for sale, or if the dev want to be cruel, the enhance stone is also sale in the item mall).

- Item mall potions (in-game potions are either RARE or doesn't exist)

- A book of certification (in order to GRIND for more than X levels; Hello Granado Esprada)

- item drops x2 stone in item mall (self-explanatory)

Need I go on? This is what you'd get for a game with item mall. Tell me you want GW (or GW2 or just the game you're going to play) to be like that.

I've repeatedly stated this:

The only solution to the problem of gold sales is to make everything of value in the game only available through organized play or accomplishment. And even that has severe problems.

Suppose that the only way you could get a Miniature Kanaxai was to beat the Deep with a group no larger than six players in an hour or less.

Suppose that the only way to get a Miniature Rollerbeetle was to score 480,000 or above in rollerbeetle races.

Further suppose that these items could not be traded, and that you made similar alterations for every weapon and armor set in the game. (Ex: only way to get FoW would be to beat every elite mission and achieve rank 4 in KoaBD, or some such; after doing so, armor crafters would inexpensively provide you with one if you wished.) Gold would then be meaningless and there would be no reason to bot the game.

However, this would simply change the resource that GW rewards from time to skill. Accordingly, players could sell the service of playing someone else's account to get the Mini Kanaxai or what have you. People have sold highly ranked accounts, guilds with gold capes, fame farming services, and what have you during GW's run. It would eliminate botting (which would be good for the servers), but if you thought that it would eliminate the exchange of IRL cash for in-game stuff entirely, you would be naive.

Games have cool stuff that people want. At the end of the day there's no reason to continue to play an MMO other than the desire to get better-looking stuff, better titles, better guild rank, win Halls, hold Halls for X amount of time, win an AT, win a monthly, or whatever accomplishment it is that a player might wish to attain. The problem is built into the incentive structure of the game, and that incentive structure is necessary to keep you playing.

Legalized gold sales would be an epic failure of game design. It would reshape the game to one where deep pockets would be necessary in order to afford anything of consequence. This would be great for a certain small segment of the community that is sufficiently skilled to supply the high-end stuff, as well as those (such as the bots) with huge amounts of time on their hands. However, ANet clearly wants to sell lots of copies to fairly casual gamers that are price sensitive and able to put the game down for long stretches. Gold sales would be antithetical to both of those objectives.

Could ANet deal with the problem more capably through improved game design? You bet. I hope that GW2 applies some of what the community has generally learned since WoW and GW hit the streets. But I do not hold out hope that the problem will go away entirely.

Basic game theory: if it is costly to enforce rules against cheating, and it is rewarding, people will cheat.

I think most of you are under the assumption that the average player knows that gold buying or selling is against the EULA. I assure you, just as there is only a small minority that read forums, there is a smaller minority that reads their EULA. I have come across many MMO players who have bought gold and had no idea there was even a controversy over these things. I think it's admirable that MMO companies do try and educate the player on the issue but realize that most people buying gold do not realize that they are affecting the game or do know it and it's a non-issue to them.

I do like the ideas and suggestions coming out of this thread though, it's a great discussion. Please don't make it political.

And the Power will be abused unless the members of Squads are Paid employees of A-net/NC-Soft.

Certainly. However, it may cut down on ANet's monitoring costs sufficiently to make it worthwhile. (At that point, they only have to monitor the police force, and probably make Support a bit more effective - at least when dealing with this type of infraction). It would reshape the game experience; whether it would be a profitable reshaping from ANet's perspective is something that their marketing department is better equipped to answer than I.

And if you think that the game will be changed in any way that marketing believes will cut revenues...

Which is why you need public oversight. It will not be perfect, but modeling a moderation system on a police force can be an effective mechanism.

The trick, however, is that, like real life, you have to have the community participate. Just like with a real police force, if the community stops keeping an eye on it, corruption can set in and take over, and once it's entrenched it's very difficult to weed out (easier in a game where you can just revoke privileges with a SQL command, but still...)

I think such a system would have to give the ability to the "deputized" players to ban without having ANET's or the community's approval, but their would need to be an appeals process and public documentation of the reasoning behind each ban (sans identifying account info, of course).

I think relying on just ANET can never work because they need to pay people, and paying a 24/7 active "police" force that can respond to /reports instantly is not feasibvle. Likewise, relying entirely on a democratic system can never work because it can easily become a popularity contest that can be abused by people with a lot of friends.

Which is why I think Slashdot is not a good model for moderation. I was a pretty successful troll on Slashdot a few years ago, and the key to the success was the moderation system itself. I had something like the 5th or 6th biggest friends list on the site, and I was able to marshal support from it whenever my trolling netted me bad "karma" on the site. At first I used the editor Michael as a focal point and started attacking him in the stories, which inevitably garnered positive moderation on my comments from like-minded Michael-haters. Later, when they added the politics subdomain (and after Michael was fired), I was able to post political commentary that inevitably attracted the support of whichever party or mindset I was ostensibly pushing.

Implementing something like that in a video game, with Guilds, Alliances, and the like is, IMHO, a recipe for disaster. Remember this: the average IQ is always 100 because it's mapped to a bell curve, but a 100 IQ is, quite simply, not usually that bright. Trusting the public, then, to monitor itself in an equitable manner is just not a good idea. Many won't get it and many of the ones that do will manipulate it for their own gain.

Like I said, I'm looking at this from a primarily GW point of view. I'd personally be happy to pay for the game and expansions and then have the choice of finding/crafting items and crafting armor or buying them for RL cash. And, just a side note, but the storage in GW is pretty bad if you only have one campaign. Many of us have solved this by RMT already, buying extra char slots to mule for us.

As I said, this only really works in a game like GW where vanity is all that matters, none of these things are needed or required, only desired.

I look at it like this : in the time it takes me to grind the required ectos and shards for FoW, I could have been doing consulting work that would have made me hundreds of pounds, at least. If I'm forced to choose, I choose money (working for it) over grinding. So, as a somewhat casual player, I'd like the option to give Anet my real cash in return for a flashy item that I don't have the time to invest in the game to get. Remember, GW was supposed to be skill>time. For PVE players, this hasn't been true for a very long time.

To those that feel there should be a crack down on RMT; apparently when you read these articles’ on RMT most of you forget to read the part that most of these companies give KICK-BACKS to the game publisher company considered an operating cost.

To those that support in game gold buying via ANET or NCSof; the only way this could be done that would not affect the economy drastically would be for ANET to establish a price on every item in the game and enforce this price with NPC traders. That means the company would have to spend money on developing. The publisher would have to pay for this development and that is NOT GOING TO HAPPEN

Why is it not going to happen, see above statement or re-read one of the none basis articles’ that are not afraid to upset the game companies and even mention Kick-backs. The publisher have a real dilemma now, waste money on developing something that will give a marginal profit or keep taking kickbacks from RMT at no cost to them. Morality is always subjective.

I reported one gold seller through NC Soft website with screenshots, took me about 45 minutes to report the gold seller. If ANET or any company was serious about stopping gold sellers they would have an easy way to report them. Type in “/report name” do you see gold seller listed as an option?

First point I'd like to make is this: Buying a magazine for mini-pet codes is different than going to an RMT site to buy in game gold. Why is it different? One is promoted by the game company while the other is not. Skills and bonus mission packs; also other games with premium item malls, while technically can be "RMT", it is not the same as 3rd party website RMT services.

The one key point many people over look is the 3rd party RMT sites, the ones who spam us, bot, steal accounts, and steal identities are dealing in trading items (Gold included) that do not belong to them. Those who buy off these RMT sites are paying real money for items (Gold included) that do not belong to them. There would not be much difference if I walked into anyone of your homes and starting selling your "stuff" and pocketing the money.

It has and always will be a legality issue for game companies and rejection of RMT trading by 3rd party sites will always stay. To support it means that the game company opens itself up, wide open, for lawsuits in the event an RMT service cheats its customer(s). Allowing it also means they support people buying and trading in property that does not belong to those users.

Would I support Anet, or any other game company, starting their own parental RMT service as it deals directly to Gold? No. Guild Wars economic function is not even remotely close to that, of say, Project Entropia.

It really boils down to greed and lazy players. Where we live in a world of instant gratification, if we can't have it now, we find ways around the system to get what we want as quickly as possible and with minimal effort. Having large amounts of gold in this game serves no purpose, other than social status, which also serves no purpose.

While I like what Blizz has done with their message, as well as other sites that have done similar, the truth of the matter is that it won't make much of an impact by itself. The unfortunate thing about online gaming is that, again, greed and laziness will trump common sense. Common sense already tells us, without the pretty web page, that buying online gold and eBay trading items, hurts the game, gives more money to the RMT'ers that can put more funds into their spamming, their bot accounts, offsets the amount of gold in use in the game, and impacts game economies. Common sense also tells us if that buying gold and items with real money is "OK", why is being done by 3rd party websites and not the actual game company itself?

Without Taxes and a Federal Reserve that can control the physical amount of money in x-economy, it takes much less change to offset the game economy.



To be honest, I'm not sure what the solution is. You can't rid the world of greed (on both sides of the equation). Even after lawsuits by certain gaming companies, RMT and spamming still continues and is much worse in F2P games such as Scions of Fate in which you can have half a dozen bots spamming the chat all at once. Steps can be taken to control and limit the amount of abuse, something GW has and is doing, but like a flu season, with all the prevention, you can't rid all of the virus.

Here in GW we at least, as players, have some tools to help control it. We have a report function that's easy to use. We have a Game Staff that does communicate and does take action. We're fortunate in that we as players do have the ability to say, as a collective, if you spam us, you bot around us, and try to harm our game, we will report it and we will help put an end to it. It can act like a neighborhood watch, to residents who give a damn about their community, to watch out for the health and welfare of each other who share that same community.

Anet has also done the same by swinging the perma-ban hammer to those who spam, bot, and take part in the trading of RMT services. That's a lot more than other games out there that sit on their hands and shrug their shoulders, or slap players wrists with a 5 day ban. Yes, those games exist, where truly, 100%, nothing is done.

If Anet wants to follow in the tracks of other companies who have posted such pages on the impacts of using RMT, that's great, but it's not going to serve much purpose, or provide much impact, if any at all. It's with good intentions, don't get me wrong, but the problem is much larger than simply posting a notice.

Perhaps a better notice to be posted would be a "Call to Action" notice for players. One that outlines, especially to new players, how our report feature works and give that report feature a clear checkbox option related directly to RMT spamming, buying and trading. It should encourage players to report these specific actions. That it's not "noob", or foolish, to report. That your report is helping your community and helping to prevent future harm.

Right now the greatest defense we have against RMT by 3rd parties is ourselves. A collective community, operating on the same page, with the tools at hand, against RMT, is takng a stance and is working with Anet to help in this battle.

The Game and its Company doesn't exist without its players. The players don't exist without its game and its company. When they both work together it can be a wonderful thing.

So basically your proposed business model is like GW (pay once to play one game) but with an option to BUY IN-GAME ITEMS WITH REAL MONEY?

Seriously?

Currently, some people (yeah, even now there're just some) think of high-end items as accomplishments (from grinding, getting lucky drops, whatever), and clearly not everybody can have them (for example I don't see myself wearing FoW anytime soon).

But still some people regard FoW wearers as "gold buyers". Granted, they could be wrong. But who knows? Some of them might've really bought gold to buy those high-end stuff.

See the point now? If said items can be bought with real money "legally", what would be their value? Who would care about them, now that whoever wear them would be nothing but "rich kids" in real life? You can still say "I grind for it myself" but who would care, when we all know so well everyone can buy them with money?

This has nothing relates to the Skill > Time that you want so much. It will only lead to real-life money > EVERYTHING.

And before you propose another set of high-end items that can't be bought, I'd tell you that then nobody would bother with buyable items and instead focus on said in-game only items, and everything will end up JUST LIKE HOW IT IS NOW.

Yes, that is my proposed business model. The stuff you can buy is exactly the same as the stuff you can grind for, no differences whatsoever (apart from being customized ofc).

Why? Because no one does care, anyway, no one at all. I just want it because it looks flash. Sorry, I'm far too used to SP-RPG's so I don't get items or titles because I think they make me look good to others. I get them because I want them for myself. Case in point is my Ranger. The female FoW ranger armor sucks, imo, so she's running armour from Voldo the Exotic. My ele is also running Voldo armor (Tyrian, I think). In fact, none of my chars have any elite armor because it's a waste to grind for it. I'd rather spend the money on stupid titles like drunkard, sweettooth and lucky.

As you have already pointed out, most people with multiple FoW sets are already considered gold buyers by most people. As it stands real money > everything already, hence the problems with goldsellers and people still buying from them. All I'm proposing is that Anet is the benefactor, rather than some random scrub who can set up a website and a couple of bots.

Yeah well. Sorry but not everyone thinks like you.

And someone who is "considered" to be a gold buyer is TOTALLY different from someone who "why wouldn't he do it anyway?" really buys items with real money.

Why don't we just agree that Anet selling in-game currency would be a suicide attempt and drop this whole "I think they should do it because I want it" thing once and for all? I don't feel like repeating my replies over and over like how you provoked me to.

In NO WAY i would accept RTM from Anet.
High end stuff is for players who deserve it.
When i see someone in FoW armor, I can think "this person know the game, he should be a decent player". If that person have bought his stuff, it would be a LIE for me. That person is a CHEATER. Thats not only vanity (where? if you cheat, how can you be proud of it? Ill never be able to understand fools anyway), thats about the opinion that others make about you.
Games are games. Real money have nothing to do in games. Most players will strongly disagree and avoid such *cough* games *couGH*.
By the way... Anet, stop with your exclusive stuff, like the BMP, or you'll lose some clients: me, my friends, and be sure that I would make a lot of noise about that on the internet and in every way i could. Thats the wrong way to improve gw. Most of my guildies (and random ppl) were pissed about it... /fail.

To stop spamming, thats easy. Ask for volunteers. I am. Give them the possibilty to record the main chat on your server, and ban after 10 mins. Of course, the volunteer would be perma banned if hes doing wrong. Thats easy to do. Very. This wont stop gold trading, only spamming... would be nice thougt.

Why would it be a suicide attempt again? Someone remind me? Because Sony did this... quite successful I might add. The same doom and gloom predictions popped up when Sony did their station exchange... in case you haven't noticed it's still up, running and successful.

SOE does this with its games and Station.com. Basically, since the world is sharded, you can choose at the time of character creation whether you want to be in a shard that allows the use of Station.com to buy and sell equipment or you can choose to be on a server that disallows the use of station.com.

It seems fairly effective. People can still do RMTs illegitimately, but it's silly since it's a ban risk and you can just use a shard that legalizes the trade of items for money. It also provides something of a free market managed by the players so that they not only have safe, monitored transfers, but they also have the ability to pay market value rather than whatever price some guy across the world chooses to set.

The key, however, is the sharding. If GW2 continues on its single-world path, this is not an option.

Sorry, but given Anet hilarious track record with the ban stick, why wouldn't anyone buy gold? It's not like you're likely to be caught, at least from what I've heard in these parts.

Also, I fail to see how it would be a suicide attempt, given that it's proven to work elsewhere but yes, why don't we drop the whole "I don't want them to, so they shouldn't" argument.

Doing it the way I have suggested, it would basically have no impact on the IG economy, since the items are customized and non-salvagable. Yes, it would possibly separate a portion of the players out from the others, but by doing so it would effectively kill the goldsellers in their tracks.

Again, this isn't a system I'd seriously suggest is introduced into GW as there would be far too much resentment from those who had already spent the hours acquiring items. But for GW2, it does bear consideration as it serves the dual purposes of scuppering goldsellers and generating revenue without a monthly fee.

Very good point Ctb. It would be interesting to see more companies implement something as this, selling the items and gold at lower prices. Making it legit. While it's money in the game developers pocket (not necessarily a bad thing) it certainly hasn't caused any of their shards or their game to collapse.

Games are about nothing but money, that's why the rash of £40+ PS3 games have been made shorter than games used to be. So you'll buy new ones more often.

Yeah, I guess I can use your reply to answer Inde's question why it's not a suicide attempt for Sony: because it doesn't apply to the whole game. People can still choose to play in an environment where such things don't exist.

As I stated earlier, I didn't know how it works with EQ2. And clearly those who do know (like Ctb) understands WHY it works.