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Sony Online Entertainmenst new appraoch at out of game sales...
Sicarim
Member Posts: 219
Rather then fighting the sale of items and money on ebay, SOE is taking a different approach: they are embracing it. By the end of June, SOE will hvae set up a system of selling in game items through them, that gurantees the buyer will recieve the item, and the seller payment.
http://www.wired.com/news/games/0,2101,67280,00.html
"Like SOE, most MMO publishers ban the practice, making the traffic of virtual goods almost entirely illicit. Players are often cheated by shady traders who don't deliver as promised or who rescind payment after getting an item. As a result, SOE claims its customer service staff is constantly bogged down with angry players who have been defrauded.
But virtual goods may be worth hundreds of millions of dollars a year, and there's a lot of money to be made brokering the deals.
'Sony has finally dropped the other shoe,' said Dan Hunter, a professor at the Wharton School of Business and an expert in virtual economies. 'Finally, we understand what their reluctance (has been). It's not that the gameplay has been affected by (virtual goods trafficking), but rather, their objection has been that they can't monetize it.'"
Opinions?
Comments
SOE want to make money. Nothing new there. Perhaps it is a new way of making money, though.
Thanks for the news.
If they do that to all the EQ2 servers. I will never play that game.
There are two kinds of people in this world. People who pick their nose.. and liars.
And so mmorpgs have moved the importance from how good a player you are to the size of your wallet.
And thus the new evolution to MMORPG's is heralded in.
Sorry to those who do not like it, but this was not a question of IF it happens, but a question of Who and When.
My thoughts..
I think gamers who buy coin and such to get ahead in the game are worthless. They will never be at the top of the game because they fail to understand discipline, and more then likely this will carry over into their life as well.
However I am realistic and I fully realize the one wanting this far outnumber those not, And as thus I would far rather see the Game developer control it, then a third party.
To those thinking this will kill eq2, I would not bet on it, I would be on this rejuvinating this game because suddenly casual players who wanted to do this, would not for fear of banning. I also see the rest of the market following, why? they followed EQ. This is the undeniable future of gaming, Some of us may not like it but its here, and it will not be going away.
Also for those jumping to conclusions..SoE is not selling money..they are simply providing a place for the transactions to be handled securely, so no more money will be entering the econ.
Also for those too blind to see it, There is one definite advantage to this, Since the system will be ingame, it will take less effort to track and ban bot users and exploiters. Because after so many transactions it will be easy for the client to generate a flag.
This is going to start a whole new rash of farming issues on the EQ2 servers it's done on. I suspect the experiment is going to cause MAJOR issues in game with campers driving people away from the game.
SOE better think this through carefully. The only way I can see this working is if they sell the items themselves rather than using an auction format. THAT is a huge mistake. If they sell the items themselves IE: $10 for a SSOY or whatever they can set prices low enough that farmers will no longer bother and so that players can afford items if they really want to waste the money on them.
In game it would have little impact on the game itself other than to drive prices down a bit.
But an auction site?
OMG they're in for a nightmare if they do an auction site.
Currently Playing: Dungeons and Dragons Online.
Sig image Pending
Still in: A couple Betas
Of course, Afterall Why spend tons of money fighting something futilely, when you can control it reasonablly well and make money off it.
To me it makes perfect logical business sense. I honestly came to this conclusion 5 years ago, that this was going to be an inevitable thing, I am simply suprised it took this long.
But weren't all the protests against IGE selling game items for cash that this would break a mmorpg economy? Why is it any different if SOE do it?
Once SOE start doing this and do it to make extra money on top of subscription fees, then i think there are question marks about SOE's commitment to making the game as good as possible.
I'm waiting to see if the "exchange-enabled" servers suffer from broken economies, and if so, what SOE will do about it (if anything).
I would guess this could become more common in mmorpgs. Good or bad, but it will cut down support calls and company will make extra $$.
Ok so lemme get this right.
Since some players choose to buy a few million credits they have no discipline?In addition if they buy credits then the players real life must be undisciplined as well?
Why dont you come down off your soapbox there for a bit and stop judging people.
I can almost guarantee beyond the shadow of a doubt that most players at one time or another have thought of doing this.Chalk it up to the games being overly difficult and huge time sinks.Most people ive talked to in the real world that work full time and have kids and own a home and play mmo's have purchased credits and KEPT playing the game.These are adults that like to play online games and dont have the time to play 6 hours a day.This not only makes the game easier to stay in but makes it more fun for them as well.
The fact of the matter is that MOST people wont admit in these forums that they have done so.Players want to keep playing an mmo after an initial time investment.Some of these games require a huge time investment that most adult gamers who are responsible and have discipline do not have.
I beleive that the players who do purchase credits/items are even more responsible and disciplined than those who do not.Our responsibilites are in the REAL world and not a virtual one.How is it seen that discipline requires some one to play for 6 hours a day to get a level or item?I look at that as a waste of time.
As a matter of fact i know one person who has a 2 year old little boy that is severly neglected because he chooses to play EQ over spending time with his kid.The guy even lets his boy see him playing this nightly for 6 hours.He has missed day after day of work to play EQ.The guy makes no effort to improve his life or that of his family.He is also on the brink of divorce as well.
Yeah he leads a real disciplined life doesnt he now?
Want to ENJOY an mmo?
Dont start a guild and dont be a leader or volunteer to be coleader or captain.
Just play the damn game:)
Those who think that are idiots, I have stated numerous times that coin selling has no impact at all on the econ. I have backed those posts up with extensive reasoning so I assure you I was not one of those. Last time i posted that was a good while back though.
Poultry,
Firstly In case you forgot I have been one of the one's on this forum constantly defending IGE and coin sales dispite the fact that I disagree with it in practice. I have defended it because there has not been a single logical argument for why it should not exist outside the constant whining of "its not Fair."
As for my viewpoint on the players, Its my viewpoint plain and simple. I have stated numerous times, I am married, work a full time job and Still find time to play multiple games, spend plenty of time with my family and develop a healthy relationship, and advance my career so I am very familiar with the term responsibility. As for games being hard, the game its self might be a challenge but making money is not, I have yet to find a single game that making money was difficult, or even time consuming. Again remember what I state is never applicable to Everyperson in that group, merely in general. I am fully aware of gamers who are at the top of the game but did so by neglecting RL responsbility, those types of players earn far more contempt from me then any other type. I personally find Buying coin wholely unnecessary for anyone with the motivation, its extremely easy to make.
But that is also what seperates gamers who have and those who have not. Some people simply suck at the game and refuse to admit it. Again not all, But a fairly large portion.
But as I said, While I disagree with it, I will support the buying of ingame currency...or at least Defend it, simply based on the principle that There is no reasonable reason it should not be allowed.
Point taken.
I too support fully SOE's new policy.Another point you are correct on is the ability/motivation to make ingame currency.Most mmo's have something just short of an exploit to make easy credits/gold.
I do beleive though that mmo's in general are made to be time consuming.I think what we will see now though is the difficulty level of mmo's go up.The reason for this is so you HAVE to buy that uber sword or extra cedits to purchase a player made item in game.
Want to ENJOY an mmo?
Dont start a guild and dont be a leader or volunteer to be coleader or captain.
Just play the damn game:)
Dekoth-
I think the jury is still out on whether real world sales of virtual items can destroy a mmorpg economy. After all, applying basic principles of economics to this scenario does seem to point towards a screwed up economy.
And my brother who has a double first in economics from Cambridge tends to agree with that analysis (depending on what kind of supply/demand it creates ingame).
I can also see potential conflict with items being sold on the Exchnage and therefore not in-game.
You are correct, the jury is still out on this issue. There is a ton of evidence showing it has little impact if any on the econ, and there is plenty showing it does. I suppose its a matter of how you look at it.
For me, One of the major things I do ingame is alot of buying and reselling. I specifically drive prices up, and i do it be controlling the market with far more patience then any botter will ever have because my end goal is not to line my pocket in RL, but to line my char's pockets..its simply something I enjoy. To me, I will happily hold onto an item a few extra days to get that next level of profit out of it. where as your typical gill seller is looking at it from a time/money perspective. each day he holds onto an item is money not in his wallet, so they have more motivation to sell lower then I do. So you have two perspectives, people buying currency tend to inflate prices slightly because they have no value on the coin they purchased, its much like people who win the lottery, there is a study that has shown that the majority of people who win the lotto are bankrupt in a few years because most of them are used to not having money, and suddenly they have so much they lose sight of the big picture and before they know it they are broke. Buying currency seems to have the Exact same effect, and in effect it becomes an addiction of sorts for many. However someone like myself, and I am not so arrogant as to think I am the only player who operates like this, I impact the econ just as hard. I do it by keeping popular high priced items bought up and listed at the price I want it listed at. I have more patience then many gamers, in that I have sat on items for 2 weeks or more. Supply and demand, I have the supply and have specified my price. Most will look at the price and shun it, however impatience is an amazing thing..All it takes is one person getting tired of waiting and buying it estabilishing a beginning of a history and its all downhill from there...Voila price jump.
I was notorious about this when I played FFXI because the AH was kind enough to provide a price history, I would take items like Emperor's hairpin and Jump its price 50 to 80k every couple of weeks. Now I never did the same item all the time, Alot of times I would run an item for a week or two, then switch to another item. Usually when I let off the item would go back down some but still be higher. Once it had gone back down, I started the cycle over and pushed it a bit more. I am positive people dispised seeing my name sale after sale in the Price history..but that did not stop them from buying.
Ok well anyhow I have deviated pretty badly from my point so you generally get the point I am trying to make I imagine.
--Ha, Pwned--
Pvp = godliness
Playing: WoW
Waiting on: Gods and Heroes
Classic case of "if you can't beat them, join them."
I wholeheartedly agree with their decision to do this.
And any resembelence of ONE toon per server in swg is whiped away with buying and selling of in game items.
I guess with cu coming and so many docs/ crafters leaving they have to do something to support the combat folks i guess this is partly how they will handle the item being around in swg when numbers may/may,not take a dive come may 5th, they can always go pay cash for that xyz crafter item they cannot find on vendors now
the ecnomy was the reason for One toon per sever in swg i find this comical at best
Like it or not, this is probably a trend that will spread.
MMORPGs are run by corporations. Corporations exist to make money. If they can best do it by pulling puppies out of burining buildings or housing the poor and helpless, that's what they will do. If they can best do it by enslaving children in third world countries, that's what they will do.
I personally frown on selling items in game, because I would hope that MMOPRGs are a space that I can go to and largely escape from the economic teirs that dominate our society (i.e., it's one of the few places where it doesn't matter whether you are rich or poor in real life). However, it is foolish to thinck that they will remain free from such influences. There obviously is a market for in game items and currency. Somone will attempt to cater to any large market, whether it is illegal or not. Sony has two choices. Embrace this market and profit from it, or continue to lose money fighting those that cater to it . Only if they start to lose large numbers of customers due to implementation of this change will they pull back from it, and even then only if the profits lost in subscription revenue outweigh the profits gained by taking a cut of transactions. Once Sony succesfully pioneers this model, most other corporate run MMOPRGs will probably follow suit.
I don't want to write this, and you don't want to read it. But now it's too late for both of us.
The basic principles of economics simply do not apply in a MMOG. You do not have a zero-sum equation when money spawns from thin air, and players are not required to put said money into money sinks. If the money devalued itself through some other artificial means (deterioration, taxes, whatever) you might be able to more closely simulate a real economy. But even then, the presence of respawning money means you will always be fighting against inflation.
The number one reason inflation appears in games is because players hoard that which they earn in this constantly inflating economy. Cash keeps coming in but doesn't go out. This is very easy to imagine simply because most players will earn their items through their own efforts and not on the market, and thus the cash they obtain while playing simply becomes a part of their "rainy day" savings to thrust into that money hole that developers constantly have to create to deflate currency.
When you further consider the in-game resale of items for in-game cash you also see how inflation is compounded. The in-game cash you pay for an item typically pads the seller's account and is rarely respent. You, on the other hand, will continue to perform acts in-game that will once again line your own account. You are up an item, your seller is up the cash, and you will once again earn what you spent. With the exception of resource costs for a crafter (and most games allow direct harvesting, thus mitigating that cost) there is no downward pressure on the presence of money.
Virtual Item resale does very little beyond the presence of in-game markets. It's just another way to expend your money in an economy that is constantly experiencing upward pressure. As Dekoth has pointed out, there are far more inflationary pressures being put on the economy by item harvesters for legitimate, in-game markets than there are for virtual item resellers.
So the arguments about the destruction of economies is simply meritless. If there is any negative influence it is so marginal compared to in-game mechanics that you could easily dismiss the entire practice and see no change whatsoever.
Now, for those of you who are Achiever gamers who resent seeing TwinkA having a sword that you worked your butt off to get, I sympathize with you a great deal. But consider carefully who is at fault for this situation, because if the item can be obtained via out-of-game markets it can also be obtained via in-game markets. Thus the problem of TwinkA being "gifted" an item they didn't "earn" is not due to virtual item resale, but instead due to game mechanics that allow the trade of resources. This argument has far more maturity when you look at it in light of the age old debate about Twinking in general, and that has never been decided wholesale as a terrible part of MMOG play, simply an annoyance to a segment of gamers.
In the end, I think this entire issue has more to do with some players who feel they are excluded from a process because they do not have or do not desire to spend funds to compete, and who resent other players who are in the position to do so. Not much can be said about that imbalance, really...that's the same set of arguments that has hounded the Hardcore versus Casual gamer from day one. The fact is very simple: all things are not equal in life, life is not fair.
*Remy as a grandfather*
"When I was your age, we actually had to play the game get powerful." - Grampa Remy
"Riiight...Next you're going to tell me you had to level your toon yourself too." - Grandson
Joined 2004 - I can't believe I've been a MMORPG.com member for 20 years! Get off my lawn!
You are entirely neglecting a large number of issues in your example. Let me take you through a few of them.
First and moremost, all this new market does is provide yet another way to exchange items. If 10gp is equal to $1, and a player wants $10 for an item, I can provide 100gp to obtain such an item. That may require that I have another broker, and thus exchange 100gp for $10 and then give $10 for the item...and there will be fees involved, no doubt. But the price of the item is still relative to ingame cash and can be obtained as such.
But extend this out far further than you're currently imagining.
There will still be many, many players who will only deal with in-game currency...if only because their only interest in transactions is in-game items and it will be far easier to rule out the middlemen, brokers, and transaction fees by dealing with all items in-house. These players will probably be able to undercut the prices of out-of-game markets simply due to the transaction fees and broker fees alone...after all, if I have to pay 10% fee to the moneychanger to get the sword I now have to pay 110gp for the sword. If you truly believe in a supply and demand economy, as all MMOG economies tend to be, then price pressures will probably see in-game vendors smirking at selling the sword for 90gp and enjoying the handsome profits. This is only one fairly abstract example of many examples.
There will also be plenty of opportunists who will recognize an item for sale in one market that is under/overvalued in the other market and broker the difference. If someone is gouging on either market there will be plenty of people who will be happy to marginalize the difference.
This opens up an entirely new form of play mechanic, as a trader/broker. Plenty of players do this already with ingame markets, this will simply expand the reach and thus the opportunity. I also alluded to moneychangers and brokers, mostly specialists who will deal in currency exchanges in bulk for players who need to barter.
The point is that this is simply another market that is operating with a "new" type of currency. Will it change the game? Yes it will. But you will still find plenty of people operating on both sides of the market simply because there will be profitable opportunities on both sides.
I like the idea. Yeah, it will destroy the economy on the select servers that allow this, but it will also help the "real" servers. You can choose to play on a server that doesn't allow this, so it doesn't hurt anyone. It will likely cut down dramatically of the trading on the "real" servers. Which, IMO, is PERFECT.
It honestly seems like it will make everyone happy.
----------------------------------
"There is no reason anyone would want a computer in their home."
-- Ken Olson, chairman of Digital Equipment Corp, 1977
It will not destroy the economy on the selected servers, nor will it go away on the rest. Wrong on both accounts, my friend.