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IGE adds
stur
Member Posts: 6
I think it's great that you guys are supporting the secondary market.
A great interview is on gamespy on the subject, here is a link
http://www.gamespy.com/articles/584/584932p1.html
http://www.gamespot.com/news/2005/02/08/news_6118160.html
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6870901/
Found some more links talking about the ups and downs. Thought I'd share them as well.
Comments
IMO IGE is the bane of all MMORPGS. I dislike any site that promotes bots, sellling in game items/money for RL money. If you can't play a game the way it was meant to be played and follow the TOS then you don't belong there
People believe it affects them more than it really does it seems is the case most of the time... or they don't have the money to spend themselves
There is another side of it though with whole game economys being ruined by it, like Lineage 2 which I have seen to be pretty outrageous but it could be more faulty game mechanics than the crazy farmers fault... People despise that someone else can become better with less work, but who says they didn't work harder to get that money? It has its sides but allowing them to go about their business seems to be the less restricting option and I believe people should be allowed to do what they want especially when they are already paying for that game monthly.
I game comapanies wanted thier in-game cahs to swap hands for real money, they would implement a system to do so themselves ( and I believe a few have.)
If someone buys cas/items/characters from a 3rd-party site, IMO, they are cheating (not least becasue it goes against the ToA and EULA of nearly every MMO out there, no matter what IGE claim), and in any online game that isn't massively multiplayer they would be immediately banned from the server.
Imagine you were palying, say, Warcraft III online, imagine what it would be like if someone joined an online game you were playing and started with 10x more resources than you because they paid for it on an online site.
You would be rather pissed off, wouldn't you.
I think the only reason SoE et al haven't sued the hair of IGE is because there aren't that many negative effects from a developer/publisher's point of view, and alot of the people who are most vocal about ingame issues use services like IGE themselves, so there isn't much public outcry to have them banned.
The reason game companies don't want it is because:
You buy an account online, that mean's an already purchased cd key goes directly to you, you just have to pay the monthly fee, no box fee. This also gives you a headstart on the game and didn't force you to pay the monthly fees while you worked up your character, got money, whatever it may be.
Of course its against the ToA for games, they wrote the damn thing and don't want to lose money.
"Imagine you were palying, say, Warcraft III online, imagine what it would be like if someone joined an online game you were playing and started with 10x more resources than you because they paid for it on an online site."-Xavon
Warcraft 3 is a real time strategy game.
No, things like people buying cash does not hurt a game at all. Like when I spend two days selling 20 pillows for 600.000 credits a piece without a problem... Pillows... For sleeping... and hugging if yer scared... Sound and healthy economy... So it does not affect anyone at all, I am sure new people would love coming into a game with prices like that... Wont leave in a week and play somehtng else at all. Real good for the game developer.
You are a game destroyer.. Kewl guy... Have a cookie, you lame little talentless mushbrain.
"This is not a game to be tossed aside lightly.
It should be thrown with great force"
With games like FFXI it does have a huge impact on the economy, tho. One piece of equipment that many jobs need to be considered decently equipped, drops once on each server ever 2-48+ hours. Now if that drop is being farmed by 10 ppl in the same group who plan to sell the money they get from it to IGE, they can monopolize the auction house prices for it. Which means some serious inflation, which DIRECTLY affects me.
If I go to try to compete against these ppl, again, theres 10:1. Wats the chances Ill get the mob? Not very high, unless Im extremely lucky (which Im not). So the only other chance I have to get this item is to farm other mobs for it. Again, theres 5 ppl farming with names like "Aaaaaa" "Bbbbb" "Ccccc" etc. Guess wat they are? Theyre sellers for IGE. So now Im only competing vs 5 ppl, but the money gained from this is far less than the item Im farming for.
It may not affect games where items are easier to come by, but it definetly does affect games where a drop that is best for a certain slot, hands down, comes from only 1 mob that is on a long spawn timer.
Its so funny that ppl say that it does not affect ingame economy. As soon as IGE started paying less real money for gil in FFXI, prices on dropped items increased greatly. Things that useta cost 5k went up to 50k, things that cost 200k went up to 500k. The drops were being monopolized, n the ppl farming them could sell for watever they wanted. They changed the prices to make up for the loss that they got from IGE.
This is partly SE's fault, for making the drops like that, and for no intervention at all. But if IGE wouldnt have made such a huge impact on the game, then it wouldnt have turned out so badly. Heh.
"There's a demand because, if you're a hardcore gamer, you can use the secondary market to increase your enjoyment of the games"
I do not concur with that statement, in fact, I think the complete opposite. If you're a hardcore gamer, you do not need to cheat. Cheaters are not hardcore gamers.
http://www.facebook.com/murtb
I heard there was also an advertisement on the back of Computer Games Magazine this week, also. It's become more and more "accepted" it seems.
----------------------------------
"There is no reason anyone would want a computer in their home."
-- Ken Olson, chairman of Digital Equipment Corp, 1977
well, im not accepting it.
well, im not accepting it.
Agreed. IGE user = cheat. mmorpgs need fairplay just like any online game needs fairplay.
MMORPG
Wow, im impressed...didnt think it was that popular
Oh, the irony!
I don't really care how popular it is. As far as I'm concerned those who have to use IGE or any other cheat program simply aren't good enough to play the games and get the items legitimately.
You don't have to. Just don't mind the majority of the online population that DOES do it. Hell, I was part of a guild of 220ish people (real people, no alts allowed)... of the 220 well over half said they'd bought plat off various sites in the last 6 mo... and this was ~2 years ago. It's become alot more "acceptable" to most people since then and I'm sure the number hasn't went down with mounts and jboots and tink bags and etc etc etc.
Fact is, the vast majority of people I know online have and do buy [insert money type here]. I don't see it as a big deal, I do however think it needs regulation of some sort by the game companies to keep things in check a bit.
Edit: Chatting with a friend in aim about this thread right now, figured I'd add what he just said: "Time is money, money is time, I would rather spend my time doing something I enjoy instead of camping a 'loot mob' for several days."
Shadus
The truth of the matter is it does effect ever person playing the game.
First of all, camping. You get people camping the important mobs, which means other people cant do the quest, get the drop, or make the kill on their own. Because some people make a living with this system, and even have shared accounts so that the camper is logged in 24/7. It means that a regular person just trying to play the game cant. If they need that item to finish a quest, then they are forced to go pay real money for it online.
Second, economy. It does kill an economy. You end up with a small group of people that have the large majority of the nicer items in the game. That means they control the price of the ingame item. The price gets so high a regular gamer only has two options. Buy the money from a site like IGE, or buy the item from Ebay or someplace similar. The regular gamer cant get the item the way it was intented becuase the mob is camped 24/7. The reguar gamer cant earn enough money to buy the item becuase the price has been inflated beyond reason.
Third, its a game. A game isnt fun when you are forced to use real money beyond the monthy fee you already pay. Its not fun to follow all the clues of a quest and get to the end only to find the mob camped all day long. Its not fun to go to a bazaar or similar player market and see the price for an item is beyond anything they will ever earn. Using real money kills the game. Its not fun anymore. It becomes work. Its a game. Play the game.
Game companies get a bit pissed when other companies IGE enotts etc, make more money then they do for their work. Their line is "Well you pay for the time to get the money not the money itself" is crap.
Anyone who says it doesn't affect your game or is apathetic towards it is naive to how much harm it does to in game economies.
Essentially trading liquid assets is money laundering, because game servers have no infrastructure for each transaction, it goes unnoticed. How do we know IGE or other sites aren't involved with organised crime? Not as far-fetched as it sounds considering the volume of cash that trades hands.
Hopefully in the future game designers will implement more sophisticated code that detects suspicuous activity.
Bottom line is more people do it then everyone realises. It does influence in game influences, how can it not?
However there are a few in game mechanics that help a little, soulbound, no-drop, attuneable items, level locked items for a start.
The people who buy plat for $ need to be educated that they ARE harming the future of the game.
BTW a hardcore player starts the game with nothing like everyone else, but anyone who buys plat does so to make them #think# they are hardcore.
For those that doesn't think it effects your gaming experience.. you are mistaken.
Example: I play(ed) EQ2. I zone into ROV and find bots in there by the names of ghhwoe, weiieie, ooshdf etc. The typical 5 wizards and a cleric killing spiders as soon as I enter ROV. There isn't a spider to be had in the dungeon so how does one complete their Armor Quests or Guild Writs? Log on at a different time? Sure if RL doesn't get in the way. They don't need to gain xp and move on because you can turn off xp in EQ2. So they do this day and night.
They are farming boss mobs, they are selling the items on the bulletin board (auction type thing for those that don't know) and selling the farmed cash on IGE. So tell me this doesn't effect economy? Tell me it doesn't effect your game play? SOE doesn't seem to want to ban these bots even though countless people have complained and sent feedback.
It is a touchy subject no matter how you look at it.
But here are a few facts people need to be aware of.
So long as people are willing to buy, there will always be someone willing to sell. You can blame the sellers all you want, but they are no better/worse then the ones buying.
The buying and selling of coin does not in fact affect the market. Items and coin enter the world at a rate that is determined by the developers. It is impossible for coin to enter the world faster then the rate that they set, ( outside Duping Exploits of course ) using normal methods of farming, And including Bots. While Bots are a distinct unfair advantage allowing a player character to remain online indefinitally, The pace of items/coin entering the world remains the same that the Dev set it at. Now It is true that the buying of coin/items do affect some players negatively, primarily those who choose to play the game as intended, as its harder for them to aquire the things they want when competing with those who use RL resources to get them. However the point remains that coin/item buying/trading does not affect the actual world negatively in the manner of more coin/items entering then intended.
Some will of course argue that this affects item inflation. This is also incorrect, as per the previous paragraph dictating that items enter the world at the rate predetermined by the developers. However player Demand for a particular item cannot be determined or controlled by the developers and that is in fact what drives inflation. Allow me to give a small example.
Item x has a chance of dropping every 2 hours if the npc is being killed every 2 hours the moment it spawns. This rate was predetermined by the Developers, now this item is being farmed by Bots 24/7. the Maximum number of this item is entering the gameworld, keeping it to its minimum price in relation to the player demand for the item.
Same scenario, however its being farmed by groups of players, who are all legit just different groups of them at all times. the end result of inflation is the same as above.
Next scenario, the item is not being farmed 24/7 the npc is up soe extended periods of time not being killed at times, now suddenly the item drops are fewer between as the npc is staying alive for longer. The player demand stays exactlly the same as above, but there is now less supply. thus the item price will scale quicker in value as there is now less supply for the demand in this scenario.
Using the above example you can easily see that in the end, the selling of items/money does not affect the economy.
Now as for me, I do not buy or sell coin or items. I play enough and know the games well enough I have no need to buy. However when I am done playing a game I do in fact sell my account and will continue to do so. Personally if someone is willing to give me several hundred dollars for an account I will not be playing anymore, I find it absurd to think someone would basically throw away a few hundred dollars over a trivial morality issue over if selling accounts is right or wrong. Honestly if someone is stupid enough to pay me that kind of cash, then tank you very much I just upgraded my PC for the next generation of Games that I am moving to off of their desire to not play the game from the beginning. However in my experience most of the people buying accounts as an example at this point are experienced players. The last couple of games I left and sold my account it went to an individual who already had several nice accounts and just wanted another, without having to go through the tedium of power leveling another toon up.
The problem is not one of the total amount of coin in circulation, but one of the concentration of this coin in massive amounts in a larger number of players than would normally be the case if internet sales were not taking place.
What is distortive is that because the same person is farming the items from the mob repeatedly, the person is stockpiling cash, or concentrating the cash in a way which was not intended. It's fine if this is an actual player doing this because it is very time consuming and there will be relatively few of them who actually do it and if they want to invest the time let them. The problem comes when the person doing it is a loot farmer who sells the cash generated on the internet, because then the number of people who have this concentration of cash in game multiplies substantially .. meaning there are now more players that have excess Gold than would be the case if they were all farming for it themselves. As a result of this there is more demand for expensive items, as well as more cash spread among more people, to buy them and this feeds price increases and inflation. So the real problem is that as a result of these internet cash sales you have more people in game with higher concentrations of cash than would otherwise be the case, and this drives up the prices of things in general and hurts the player who is not buying outside the game.
To state it another way ... one player with 1000g has less impact on the economy than 10 players with 100g, because the one player has the demand of one player ... he is not in the market for 10 epic swords (unless he is a market speculator himself), but for one epic sword. And so his presence in the market does not have a huge impact on the market as a whole. The presence of 10 players with 100g on the market means there are 10 players in the market for an epic sword and this drives up the price, particularly because there are plenty in the market who have that kind of excess cash (via internet sales) to support the increase in prices. So what the internet sales really do is artificially increase the number of people in the game who have concentrations of cash, and because this cash is available for higher end items, it increases demand for them and that increases the price. Stated yet again another way ... if people were not buying in game coin for cash on the internet, there would be far fewer people with concentrated high levels of coin in game (because people would have to get it themselves and far fewer would do that than currently buy on the internet), and demand for certain items would be less, which would keep prices from inflating overly quickly. The main impact on the economy is that it creates all of these rich players with money to spend that would not otherwise be there, and of course that has an impact on demand and therefore an impact on prices.
First off, anyone that spends their money thru IGE is crazy in the first place. Most items and in-game money can be purchased at a small fraction of IGE's prices on Ebay.
Next... learn to live with it. It is here to stay. It's called the law of supply and demand. I understand this is all in virtual game worlds, but here is in essense what all of you complaining about it are saying:
It's not fair that supermarkets buy onions and corn on the cob in bulk from farmers and then resell it. I am a farmer who tries to sell my own product and cannot compete with the big guys. They have heavy machinery that plows their product up at ten times my rate (ie bots in the game you can't compete against). It's just not fair! WAAAAAA!
What you people fail to realize is that all is fair, so quit your damn bitching. You are in the game and your in game friend buys 500k gold on ebay or from IGE. Lets say he spent $60 real cash on this to save him the time of trying to harvest it himself. Now it's soooo not fair cuz he bought cool armor and a nice weapon that you can't possible afford in the game with your 1,283 gold pieces. And he still has 280,000 gold peices left! WAAAAAAAAAAAAA! Not fair! WAAAAAAA!
...Ever stop to think that you have the same opportunity to buy 500k or even a million gold pieces on line just as he did? Ever stop to think that he spent 60 real hard earned dollars (in this example) and you didn't spend a dime?
And for the farmers with bots... I do disagree with autoplay bots. I think they should all be banned period. But if a character that is actually playing 14 hours a day and he farms 200k a day and you can't compete with him cuz he is higher level and always kills you when you try to take over his camp spot.. ummm oh well. Go level some more then go back and gank him. Or go find your own spot.
As for the bots you people speak of... If it's a PvP zone or server all ya need to do there is what I used to do when I'd see the auto-play bots camping dungeon spots in Asherons Call... You go group up with some buddies and come back and take em out! They die and wind up back at the bindstone or where ever. You should have the advantage over bots granted that you are allowed to battle them. (this is why I always play the PvP servers of mmos and why I stay away from games like EQ2 that don't have them) But if its not PvP.. look you have the same opportunities as the bot owning players. They got their bots there first. You didn't. Waaaaaa! You know if you got a group together, you could always go camp the spot first yourself. But it's just not fair!! WAAAAAAA! I know. And you don't play PvP mmos cuz its not fair when a level 40 kills you and you're only lvl 31! WAAAAAA! I know. Sooo unfair these mmos are.
It's just like ridiculous to hear all this whining about mmo money selling etc. I'd hate to hear you people in real life! WAAAAAAAAA! Jimmy got that tech job i applied for and I didnt! WAAAAAAAAAa! It's not fair! My neighbot got a new Xbox with 15 cool games and I cannot afford just 1 game I want! Not fair!!! WAAAAAAAAAA! My sister got more mashed potatoes then I did! Not fair! WAAAAAAAAAAAA!
Good gawd, stop the crying over stuff you cannot control already. Instead learn to live with it and learn how to adapt to the situation at hand.
- Zaxtor
You are right to a point. But if only one small group of people control the flow of that one rare drop item, they can almost charge whatever they feel like; and if they can charge more, they will. Because they control the limited flow of the resource, they set the price, and then you get people that need it bidding outrageous amounts of currency for that item. Suppose an item was sold normally for 50k of game currency. If all of a sudden the item is controlled solely by one small group, they can charge whatever they feel like. Where else are you going to to go get it? So, then they auction one of the item which sells 150k because of the large supply of interested buyers. Now the item becomes worth a mimimum of that much, because why would they accept less if someone will pay that? Then the next auction it sells for 200k. Now the item is worth a minimum of that much, and they won't sell for less. And the cycle repeats and repeats until the economy is so inflated for that one item that you HAVE to resort to purchasing ingame currency for real money. Now project that across all rare drop items, and you will soon have a super-inflated economy. That's the basics of real life economy as well as in-game economies. Supply and demand. If there is a small controlled supply the prices skyrocket.
And as for the morality issue, breaking the law/rules (ie ToS, CoC etc) has no excuses. When you agree to their ToS or CoC you are agreeing to abide by their laws. Breaking that law, whether justifiable or not, is still breaking the law. And profiting because of law breaking is why they invented the "Proceeds of crime act" (name generally varies by country) where they now have the power to seize all the money that was gained (profit) because of that unlawful act. True it may never apply to something as small as selling an account or item, but profiting from breaking the law is still breaking the law, regardless of who buys it, or why. Just because there is a buyer, doesn't make it right and/or legal.
However a small group of players controlling an item is not exclusive to coin sellers.
Case and point, when I played FFXI.
I Crafted and did Fishing, I did not farm much. But mostly I was an investor, in that I mean I spent large amounts of time buying items out of the Auction/Bazaar's and reselling them for profit. At first it started small, however being that this is one of my primary enjoyments in a game it quickly scaled as I increased my overall capital. Long story short, getting close to the time when I left FFXi, I had millions of gil to my name, My enjoyment and something I did quite frequently was to take a highly desired rare item, Buyout every one listed in the AH or bazaar's I could find and relist them at a higher price. Did this piss players off? of course, however Because I had the money to invest, was willing to take the risk of losing it due to it not being bought, and knowing players would in fact buy it any how I was using a fully legitimate system in the game to completely control the price of an item. One of the items I did this too for example was Ochido's Kote, I drove the price of them up 200k in the span of 3 days because I kept every single one avail bought out. This is a good example of a single player majorly affecting an entire market.
My point? If I was doing it, There was definitally others doing it as well. I know of a few other players who did the same thing as me. I constantly got tells from other players accusing me of gil selling, yet I had never done so and had all gil on my char, It was merely how I enjoyed the game.
Now in this example you have the same problem described above with coin selling, yet I was using a perfectly legitimate system in game to do so. What is the difference? As far as how it affects the overall game, there is no difference, outside Player perception.
Dekoth your whole argument about the economy is flawed and wrong. You mistakenly assume that because the developers spawn X number of mobs that they expect each mob to always be killed and always drop the maximum potential amount without any delays because of a mob not being killed. This is wrong because there has to be more mobs available than it is possible to kill. If not you would have thousands of players wandering around bored to tears trying to find something to kill and the game would die a death. If every single mob was being killed in time to not cause a delay in the next spawning they would have to increase the spawn rate. There will always be more mobs available than it it possible to kill, it is a necessity for gameplays sake. Drop rates and amounts must be based on best estimates of what will be killed, not on what the maximum potential would be if every mob was killed as soon as it spawned because that would be a false view of what actually happens.
They can not factor into drop rates/amounts the actions and effects of multiple bots farming constantly 24/7. The currency gained by these bots/players would not exist but for real $$ trading because they wouldn't be 'playing'. It is extra currency that was not 'intended'. More currency ingame obviously means rare items will cost more because there is more competition to buy it. This results in it being harder for legitimate/noncheats to buy items ingame than it was intended by the developers which means gameplay is negatively affected in a big way.
Unless of course you are prepared to flash your wallet, which the developers certainly did not intend. I find it totally ridiculous that for a player to progress the way the developer intended they are effectively held to ransom and forced to pay real money, with the alternative being they fall behind and are left using the same kit for periods of time far beyond what was intended by the developers.
MMORPG
It was a good attempt at a counter argument and I will give you points for trying. Except you forgot one major detail.
Spawn time, every single NPC in any given game has them. It is a rigid set amount of time that has only 2 variables. Is the place holder for this current spawn object Alive? or When was it killed last. Every single npc is Either Alive or Dead, If its alive the timer for the spawn is not running, If its dead the npc will not spawn until the timer set by the developers expires. Translation: It does not matter bot or not, npcs will spawn but so fast. no exceptions you cannot make npcs spawn faster then the Timer set allows. So the above example while it was aimed specifically at named mobs with specific drops, can in a sense be applicable to all npcs in a virtual world.
Ever play Everquest? I remember more then once sitting in Lower guk previous to any expansions, bored to tears because there were so many players down there, that there was literally nothing to kill. Anything that spawned was dead in seconds, And once it was dead it would not repop for 15 minutes. This was the timer of the mobs other then named, this rule applies to all games of the mmorpg type. Any game that does not have that inherit rule in place, is wide open for full exploitation of its monetary system.
Look I realize you hate those who sell, I do not think any less of you for that opinion. As I said I do not sell coin and items, the only time I sell is my entire account when I am quitting. However if you are going to argue against the sellers, outside the TOS which noone can dispute. There is nothing they are doing that changes the game any more then a smart player for everyone.