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Future of RMAH
Kain_Dale
Member UncommonPosts: 378
I think this will be successful system, I will bet that many other mmo's will copy this kind of system in the future. It helps in many ways like 3rd party site, advertising and more. China goldfarmer can play too but the company have to be strictly on bot/duper or whatever if they want RMAH to be successful without inflatation. Its a win-win situation for everyone.
Just my prediction for next generation of MMO's life.
Kain_Dale
Comments
SoE has had it for a long time. EQ2 has the Bazaar (PvE) and a PvP server (can't remember the name). You can tranfer in any characters from other servers into it to sell for real money. You can't tranfer anything out. Those servers have been real money for years- everything on it can be bought or sold from player to player for real money.
Bazaar server was pretty dead last I logged into it. I tend to play the far more active RP server. When I finally get bored with it, I may tranfer over and sell everything off, and go spend that 5 bucks on a coffee:P SoE contracts with Livegamer. I visisted their site recently, and it was dead as a door nail. It's not popular at all there. SoE had an awesome filter system that cut down massively on spam, and they used it in EQ2 and SWG- this is the path a lot of players prefer- squelching, not joining RMT.
EvE Online has been doing this (RMT) for ages- except you have to go through 2 tiers, both of which CCP gets a cut of. You purchase game sub cards (at an inflated rate) and transfer them to the player you want to buy isk from (game credits). You then use those credits to buy characters, ships etc. Seller of character has to pay the $20 transaction fee.
I ain't gonna lie, I haven't paid for my 2 subs in years. Level4 missioning can pay for your sub with 3 days a month farming.
It's hit or miss. The most successful F2P way of doing it, which cuts down on bot spam is to have a freely tradable cash shop. Atlantica has some spam, but not a lot. It has other issues I won't go into, but not that aspect. When I was trialing UO again after so many years (which allows all forms of RMT and always has since 1997, and is nearly singlehandedly responsible for the success of Paypal before Ebay) I didn't get a single spam bot message in those 2 weeks, and RMT seems to be popular.
It's a hit or miss system, with people choosing to play because of or not play because of, a company's RMT position. What I think people resent most is having a P2P with a cash shop- I won't play any game that does that.
It would be interesting to have a 100% sandbox MMO with real life currencies ($, € ...). You would buy and sell items, pay players for services. There could be in game exchange of these currencies - some regions would prefer to trade in $, some other regions in €. There could be banks, loans. Your character would have a wallet - it could be stolen.
You could turn the game into a job. You could quit your real life job and earn money playing the game. And when someone in real life would ask you what are you doing for living, you could answer: I'm a mage for hire or I'm a space pirate or I craft and sell swords ....
There are sandbox MMOs that already do this. Second Life and Entropia Universe both do this. There are people who use that game both as a primary job (less common) and a part time job to supplement their income. There is even a whole popular pornographic industry within Second Life itself.