Originally posted by Herithius Sorry Blurr, you won't find any sympathy here. Like any mmo has rabid, blind fans, so does mmorpg.com Fans here think its perfectly alright to have leveling services and farming companies promote their games. Farming companies who get their gold by infesting servers with afk bots. Fans here think mmorpg.com can't attract 2 new advertisers to replace the two that are causing so much controversy. Ask any developer of mmorpg games and ask them if they support gold farming or 3rd party levelers. Odds are they will say no. Yet the namesake site of the industry does, why? Because they want to earn a profit. I don't buy the argument that those 2 ads are the make it or break it funding needed to keep the site alive.
48 hours since I posted and we have 8 views and 0 response. To say the the people who are concerned about gold farming is a vocal minority is the over statement of the century. Just a handful of bleaters who would rather start a forum about nothing, than address the root cause of the problem, which is wholly and soley the developers themselves.
As a well known Australian comedian once said in relation to changes to the Australian Football League rules on something obscure.
"guess what guys, no one gives a %$#^"
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Originally posted by Vyava A. The characters are not your, you should really know that by now. You didn't create the graphics for it, the armor for it, the skills you use, the spells you cast, you didn't create any of it after then name. All you did was assemble it from things that you paid to have access to. Your thoughts have nothing to do with your character except the roleplaying you do with it. You own that aspect nothing else, well so far, laws are still unclear here (see end)
No, the characters that I create inside a game are not mine. But my time invested IS mine. And since pretty much all characters start out empty handed, if I go out and mine for metals for 10 hours, sell those metals and make 1 million gold lets say, then those 10 hours of time are certainly of MY time and the million gold I have earned for my character came as a result of that time. So, if I now go on eBay and sell that million gold for $50 lets say, I have essentially made $5 per hour for my time, wouldn't you agree? What if I instead didn't feel like mining for 10 hours but wanted the mining skill and gold, so I paid my little sister $5 an hour to sit on my account and mine to make 1 million gold? Would that be illegal too? It seems to me that both are really pretty close to the same affair. Since everything inside of an mmo is "virtual" and not real, then the only tangible real thing here I see is the time involved to aquire a million gold or to aquire a "blackraven sword" or whatever.
B. An ingame mechanic and out of game action are two different things. Your in game theft example has no real place here.
Is it really an out of game action? (selling gold/virtual items) Don't both parties have to come back into the game medium and transfer the virtual gold/goods to complete the transaction? So stealing vitual items off of a corpse in a game is okay by you because it's all within the game mechanics eh? Hmmm, what if I pay player X $40 real cash to steal your "blackraven" sword and set of "Blackraven armor" from you and give it to me? Then what? Player X is simply stealing the armor and sword from you inside the game as the mechanics allow. So this is all perfectly legal I assume, yet selling gold in eBay is forbidden and against the law? Come on now.
C. If companies had the resources to stop virtual selling they would, but it is impractical right now. Do you know the entire idea behind the serial numbers on crafted items in SWG? It was to track players selling their wares out of game so that they could all be removed from the game when the player selling out of game was discovered. If a company could put a serial number on every item created and every piece of currency within their game then they could instantly remove all ill gotten currency from the game. But immagine the server load. It just won't happen. Imagine what would happen to the currency selling companies involved? most would just stop and those left would be the one time almost impossible to track sellers in ebay or such. The issue would be much less than it is now. Who would buy a milllion gold and use it on the action house if that gold was tracked since it existed in the game and everything purchased with it suddenly disappeared. The limiting factor to stop out of game sales is the cost of man power, the server laods and costs for more nodes, costs for possible legal services, and I am sure more things most game companies really could not afford to pay and keep the games alive.
If companies have the resources to stop virtual selling they would??!??? Reeeeallly now? Are you sure about this?? Are you going to tell me that in any given game they cannot easily track these transactions and put a stop to them? Let's take the popular World of Warcraft for example. Let's say I buy 3,000 gold from guy on eBay for $99. This guy comes into WoW and simply uses his farmer character to send my character 3,000 gold via the games mail system. Now, 3,000 gold is a helluva lot of WoW money. These type of transactions that take place every single day on every WoW server and could very easily be tracked. Player X sent Player B 3,000 gold. Hmm Player B has not given or sent player X anything. Must be a out of game sale. Ban player X for selling gold, and ban player B for buying gold out of game and delete the gold. Bam, done deal. Easy as that.
The problem is that the companies who make their rules and user agreements no to do these out of game transactions simply do not enforce their own rules. It would be very easy to stop this, but the fact is that they don't want to lose the monthly fees of all those involved in such activities, it is much more profitable for them as a company to allow this.
In fact, any mmo company could easily change their own game mechanics to not allow such transactions at all. Think about this for a moment. It would be just as easy for a mmo game company to put a trade system in place that only allowed trades that were close in value, for example within a 10% variance. This would also ensure that no players or "noobs" ever got ripped off. Say if Player A put a 10,000 gold value sword in the trade box, then player B would need to put anywhere from 9,000 to 11,000 gold in or items of that value variance. If the trade wasn't of the 10% equal value variance and both players didnt click agree then the trade would not complete. This is just one very simple solution off the top of my head, and I'm sure there are much better solutions available as well. The fact is however that mmo game companies continue to allow complete freedom with trading and giving items/gold... and with that they leave the door wide open for eBay and gold farmers selling game money and items.
D. This is what we call irony.
Yes it is.
For some reason people think money should get you anything time can. The jury is still out on absolute legality as far as this goes really. It isn't really legal or illegal yet. It doesn't really fall into any laws specifically, but it does touch on others. Do you have the utilitarian rights to the specific combination of data that is your character because you put the effort in to create that combination? No court seems to have touched that issue yet specifically, or if the time involved is legal to sell. If all parties have paid access to the service are they allowed to make deals out of game buying/selling somethign that already exists in that game world and only to be used by those who have legitiment access to that game world? Civil suites since MUDs have gone both ways on this and there realyl isn't a standard yet because it never goes to a higher court, heck would you bother with such a tiny issue at a higher court? It really isn't legal or illegal right now, just kinda depends on circumstances. One issue a lot of people are not discussing here is that fact that a large amount of the gold and items that are being sold shouldn't exist in the game world and even if it is legal to sell somethign you earned many of the items should not be. Duping and exploiting are a source for alot of the items being sold online and that brings up additional issues. This greed, jealousy, and gimme-gimme attitude is what is going to destroy the MMO market. Legal or not if buying and selling currency or items becomes standard the MMO market will die. Start adding up the costs per month to play and buy currency and how fast players burn through content. It is about $.50 a day to play an online game now, double or triple that to stay competitive and people will just stop playing.
Look, I totally agree that this mass selling of gold and items only hurts the games. It ruins the economies, completey changes the aspects of the games entirely. It produces tons of farmers in the best hunting grounds of the games. I don't condone the selling of gold and items. I just don't see it as being "illegal". I only see it as it is. It is typicaly a rule in the user agreements that prohibits such activities, and the consequences are usually suspensions or bannings of the said accounts. But with that, the mmo companies don't even bother to enforce their own user agreement rules because of their own greed. So with that well known, can you really blame the virtual goods sellers for taking advantage of this and selling gold and items that they have spent time aquiring? Can you blame Mr Ximbob in Taiwan for spending 56 hours a week earning gold that will be sold so he can feed his family?
While I totally agree with you on most aspects and how much this all ruins the mmos we love, I have to firmly disagree when you start flinging the "illegal" word around aimlessly, especially when it is aimed at innocent parties such as mmorpg.com.
Selling virtual goods and services is typically against the user agreements and rules. It is in no way an "illegal" activity. The biggest crime is not committed by the sellers and buyers of the virtual items, rather it is of the mmo companies to want to prohibit it in their own user agreements and then watch as their own rules are broken and do NOTHING about it...because banning the two players in any transaction costs them atleast two accounts of monthly service fees for as long as those two accounts are banned. If you people wanna point the finger, point it at the most guilty party... the mmo companies who won't even try to enforce their own rules.
Originally posted by zaxtor99 Look, I totally agree that this mass selling of gold and items only hurts the games. It ruins the economies, completey changes the aspects of the games entirely. . If you people wanna point the finger, point it at the most guilty party... the mmo companies who won't even try to enforce their own rules.
- Zaxx
Well I am on record in probably 100+ posts that I am completely against farming and the trade in virtual good 100%.
However I keep hearing point 1 that you made Zax over and over again like it must be true because it gets repeated so often. I have still yet to see one scrap of genuine evidence that supports the notion that it ruins game economies etc etc. Just lots of statements backed up by nothing but more statements.
Players hitting level caps and using thier level 60 resources to twink their noobs, potentially have as much of an impact on game economies as farmers and if you think they dont, then prove it, with something more than your opinion.
As for the second point, well thats been my sole and complete argument all along. Anyone who bleats about farmers and has not bothered to email SOE or Blizzard etc and ask them why they dont police their EULA's has basically no grounds to attack someone like MMORPG.com.
If you agree that the developers are capable of programming these vast complex worlds we inhabit, you must agree that they are capable of securing them adequately to stop or at leadt dramatically reduce the trade in virtual goods. One notion without the other is just fantastic one eyed nonsense.
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[quote] Originally posted by zaxtor99 Selling virtual goods and services is typically against the user agreements and rules. It is in no way an "illegal" activity. The biggest crime is not committed by the sellers and buyers of the virtual items, rather it is of the mmo companies to want to prohibit it in their own user agreements and then watch as their own rules are broken and do NOTHING about it...because banning the two players in any transaction costs them atleast two accounts of monthly service fees for as long as those two accounts are banned. If you people wanna point the finger, point it at the most guilty party... the mmo companies who won't even try to enforce their own rules.
- Zaxx [/b][/quote]
There is a legal case that is under close watch right now based on the fact that it is not only virtual items. Every piece of data in that game is on a server rented or owned by someone. The data that is the item you think you have earned is not on a server owned by you or rented by you. The only right you have to it is access until you do something that stops access. You stop paying you have no access to it, if you break a license agreement you lose all access to it.
There you go. That is what you have to wait for. The contention that makes the items being sold no longer virtual and then basically sellign server space they have no connection to. Beyond that I give up. People will try to justify anything anyway they can until they get caught, which is all you are attempting to do.
Peoples paying RL money to buy stuff in MMO never hinder my playing performance, I report some of them but that is where it stop (I usually warn them to stop or to face a report, this stop them right cold, but some even become better friends after).
Uber-Raiders and Gankers ruins my gaming experience on a daily basic.
The day Afterlife, FoH, TR or another uber guild is officially posting ads on this site, I go away extremely fast.
The only good uber guild is an uber guild on another server/game!
Explaining how Afterlife and FoH ruins a game for the vast majority of players is bound to be long, hazarduous and bringing lot of those thugs out to argue.
Let's just say that a server catering to those uber guilds is never going to buy my loyalty.
RL money 'immorality', I don't think it is that immoral that someone spending $10k get a clone of my character and play some toon I used to know, in fact I will even be inclined in helping them, I will be nice and sharing jokes with them as well as advising them. This result in kindness back from them either in game opportunities, in friendship or in talking. However someone making $10k money from selling a pixelised toon is immoral, so all the more reasons to hate those raiding thugs.
Someone buying from IGE can be my friend, I might report him so he better be careful about how he say stuff, I am human and subject to every human default, so if he train me and then tell me he buy something, that might do a nice report...but that is pretty much the limit of it, I see that as a tool, an argument, if they are mean and I want vengeance...that is pretty much the limit of it. I don't care been surrounded by IGE folks, in fact those are very nice folks.
Surround me with Uber Guilds folks just to see the result (Like LoS, prolly would be the same with AL and FoH but I never meet them). I can bet that you will get 3 GM desisting all their responsabilities and leaving this GM job within a few month of 'share' co-existence, there is no talking with uber guild. Only pure raw hatred. They are jealous of my achievements outside of a guild and I am jealous of the gear they are unworthy of earning that the devs throw their way. Pure raw hatred.
Raiders and Gankers ruins a game. IGE, nah, they are funny and amusing and if their customer want to group and a mentor, it is possible that I might be doing it, they don't ruin my gaming experience in any form. The fact they buy items don't affect how those items are earned. Raiding and Ganking affect how those items are earn...thereby raiding and ganking are not tolerated in a 'grouping/soloing' game as far as I am concerned toward the 'uber loot'.
And if you are still unsure...well, who do you think are selling toons to IGE, the raiding thugs of course! The raiding thugs are the problem, not IGE. If the game was not built to cater those raiding thugs, IGE would find it hard to get good deals, as peoples would actually enjoy playing the game. But no...devs encourage IGE beyong anything they can possibly understand with those raiding thugs.
- "If I understand you well, you are telling me until next time. " - Ren
The sooner a court case is run to determine the ACTUAL legality of this issue the better. My gut feeling is that it wont be simple.
If the defendants are smart they will argue that the MMO developers have had every opportunity to secure their products and failed. You cant leave $10 lying out in the street for days on end then complain that it was stolen if someone picks it up. Sure it remains your property, but it also remains the property of the police until you lodge a formal claim for it and prove its yours. In other words ownership of something can transfer if the circumstances are right. Its fair to say the circumstances surrounding virtual goods are grey enough at this time that anything is possible in terms of a legal outcome.
I mean lets face it. One of the main concerns in any case of this nature is that the complinant has to prove they suffered a loss and the virtual goods and currency never actually leave the game. They just transfer control from one party to another, they dont disapear, nor are they removed. Its a very very grey area legally.
However the power to run these court cases and get some clarity rests ultimately with the game developers, as does the power to secure their games in the first place.
As far as Im concerned, whislt I can still put up this link :
Talk is one thing, evidence is another. In this case the evidence overwhelms the talk with a magnitude that makes a mockery of Blizzards claims to be concerned about it.....
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There is no way it can track what websites people go on, such as the sites to purchase money in games, and doing so would be illegal because its an invasion of privacy on the game company's part. Also it isnt illegal to do this and if you're somehow cought in game, theres no actual evidence that you payed money for the gold or items unless you, the buyer, sent the company of the game a paypal receipt or something lol.
Couple things I wanted to clarify: I did see the sticky thread, however for some strange reason my brain did not equate the term 'vritualseller' with these type of services. I'm a college student so that excuses my brain . Anyways, as regards to the use of the word 'illegal', I suppose it depends on your feelings toward the law and how 'bendable' it is. Personally I take the stance that if you agree to a EULA, then that's a binding contract, and you are breaking that contract if you go against the rules written it it. Is it illegal? Technically yes if you look at it that way. I could have used another word, but I stick by my decision. Alot of people do illegal things without even thinking about it. Changing lanes while turning at an intersection, downloading mp3's/movies, etc. During closed betas most people are given an NDA to sign and agree to, which states that they are not supposed to talk about the game or aspects of it, yet many people do anyways. If you think that some rules are breakable, then maybe you don't consider it illegal, or maybe you don't consider it illegal because it doesn't hurt anyone.
Many of us feel that gold farmers and account sellers can ruin a game, but it still continues to be (it appears) quite profitable for those in the business, and many people still seem to do it. Whenever we start playing a new MMO, one of my buddies always eventually ends up buying gold online so he can get all the high end items in order to be 'twinked' and uberpowerful. I find this ruins the experience for me because I know he hasn't earned any of it and he pretty much skipped content in the game. However there'll always be people who want to skip to the end of the game or pay cash to increase their power.
A question I might add is, do you lose respect for mmorpg.com when they accept ads for ingame sellers? Should mmorpg.com be more worried about it's reputation as a news source, or how much money it's bringing in from ads?
(As a side note, even though I now realize that there is a sticky thread dealing with more or less the same subject, it seems we are having a decent conversation about the topic anyways, so I stick by my decision, though next time I'll check twice
"Because it's easier to nitpick something than to be constructive." -roach5000
As others have stated virtual gold seller are not selling the virtual gold/plat. They don't own the virtual gold/plat which is essentially made up of 1's and 0's on some server. They are selling the time it took them to farm the gold/plat and the time spent to trade it to the other player. For this compensation of time spent they recieve real world cash.
I really don't care for gold sellers or buyers but the fact is they can do what they do because A.) EULA's are not laws and they cannot violate local, state or federal consumer rights laws. B.) The sale of time spent while playing a game/trading in game in exchange for money is not against the law and cannot be prevented via a EULA.
Games I've played/tried out:WAR, LOTRO, Tabula Rasa, AoC, EQ1, EQ2, WoW, Vangaurd, FFXI, D&DO, Lineage 2, Saga Of Ryzom, EvE Online, DAoC, Guild Wars,Star Wars Galaxies, Hell Gate London, Auto Assault, Grando Espada ( AKA SoTNW ), Archlord, CoV/H, Star Trek Online, APB, Champions Online, FFXIV, Rift Online, GW2.
Originally posted by Blurr A question I might add is, do you lose respect for mmorpg.com when they accept ads for ingame sellers? Should mmorpg.com be more worried about it's reputation as a news source, or how much money it's bringing in from ads?
Its a question of numbers just likie it is for the MMO developers.... and there in lies the problem.
If any business is to make money or even cover its costs, they have to appeal to the largest available market segment. Believe it or not the pepople seriously concerned about virtual trading wouldnt make up 1% of the gaming community. So if you worried too much about what they thought it would be commerical suicide.
As for the credibility issue. Becoming right wing apologists hasnt hurt Fox.
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Originally posted by M1sf1t A.) EULA's are not laws and they cannot violate local, state or federal consumer rights laws. B.) The sale of time spent while playing a game/trading in game in exchange for money is not against the law and cannot be prevented via a EULA.
Exactly M1sf1t. This is exactly what I have been trying to say in a lot less words actually.
Now, again I ask this question:
If I am playing Ultima Online (which also has a user agreement against out of game sales of the virtual property) and I am mining for valorite ingots which I then trade to smiths in the game for GOLD... and it takes me say 10 hours to get enough ingots to equal 1 million gold (example only)...
If I decide I dont have the time to spend mining for 10 damn hours, and I pay my little sister or friend to sit at my computer and do the the work for me, so that 10 hours later I have 1 million gold... Is this illegal??
Most will agree that the above example is not illegal, even though essentially I am paying for the 1 million gold and I at say $5 an hour to my friend to mine, I am paying him $50 for that million gold.
Now if I see 1 million gold on eBay instead for $20 from a Chinese farm, then I will save myself lots of cash. But here, this is actually forbidden in the EULA and user agreement.. but it is actually no different at all. I am still paying for someone elses time, but here I am saving lots of cash because the chinese farmers will work for a lot less money then my sister or friend. But I am still essentially paying them for their time so that I don't have to spend 10 damn hours mining to get that million gold.
Now I pose a few questions directly related to my above hypothetical situation...
A) Is paying $20 for that million gold really gonna hurt UOs economy? I fully intended to get that million gold anyhow... whether it be by doing the work myself, paying my friend, kicking my sisters butt and making her do it for a candy bar, or paying the Chinese farmer guy.
By paying the Chinese farmer guy who already has lets say 105 million gold stocked up... he is simply transfering gold already existant on the server to me. He now has 104 million. And I am happy with the 1 million I purchased. I quickly spend that million gold on cool armor! Woot! This million gold went right back into the economy and was a successful trade with another player. This trading keeps the player economy thriving. Now I need a cool sword too! So I go back to the Chinese farmer guy and buy another million gold for another $20. I buy my sword and some reagents for my mage. Cool! More money back into the trading economy! And I have saved 20 hours of mining time, while some Chinese guy is plugging away doing some skill that earns him gold to trade away. As long as the gold isn't illegally "duped" (and let's assume that it's not).. How does this really hurt UO's economy??
C) In this example, if I had no other means to earn the money I wanted or needed in the game besides going and spending my 50,000th game hour mining or fishing or whatever... if I actually had to do the work myself, maybe I would quit UO altogether. Now I have a nice option to get some cash quickly for really only about $2 per hour for my time. Then I get the gold so I can buy what I need/want in the game, I stay happy, and so I continue my UO subscription as a happy customer... Where as if I didnt have that eBay gold buying option available I might have just quit due to having no gold and not wanting to do tasks I didnt enjoy in the game to reaquire the needed gold. So isn't this certainly a plausable scenario?
I am just thinking out loud. What do you all think of my questions here?
I understand that selling virtual items is against most mmos EULAS and user agreements. But my question now is DOES IT REALLY HURT THESE GAMES AS MUCH AS EVERYONE SEEMS TO THINK?
Zaxtor I don't understand how you can justify it like that. A more apt way of putting is is like this.
You take a trip to a theme park. You buy meal tickets that can be used anywhere through out the park as part of your hotel bundle. You use the meal tickets all up before dinner. You goto a person who entered the park legally, but is now selling food without permission. You buy it from him even though he has no permission to sell food in the theme park. It may be cheaper, it may be convenient, but that doesn't make it right just because it is a better deal.
The game world, your characters money, your characters items, and the data that is your character is the company's, not yours. You pay a fee for the joy of accessing the character, not for the license to use it for profit. You sell your time, an item, or the access to the character you have become a reseller. Your license doesn't authorize you to be a reseller, you are committing an wrongful act.
You may not understand this concept, but that is it. Your whole if i buy gold instead of using the gold thing may equal out in numbers to you, except you are not paying the royalties due.
If you still don't understand that concept then all of these sites should really be shutdown just because they illegally use the copyrighted names of games on their menus. That alone should shut them down, if companies had the cash flow to go after all of them in court, but they don't.
How does it ruin the economy. Massive inflation rates compared to no farmers and currency sellign on a server. Inflation happens, but gold farmers only put money into the system and do not take it out. They don't use any gold sinks like consumables from the normal market, they don't have epic gear with higher repair costs, they don't spend money on materials just to level up a craft at a loss. That imbalance creates inflation dramatically faster than normal.
Before companies started mass farming/duping and such currency was a mino annoyance. Most was sold through auction sites by players closing accounts or students and such trying to scrap up cash to buy a new toy. When it was a small amount of the total currency on any server it didn't affect things that much, but now that there are companies with multiple employees on 24hr rotations it isn't just a little currency it is a massive ammount that should have been slowly been eliminated from the economy through currency sinks, but wasn't.
Wow Zax thats great. You have basically proved what I have been saying all along but couldnt be bothered spelling it out like you have.
Technically the act of farming and selling gold should have no appreciable difference to the games economy that could be measured.
Lets face it if every "normal" player suddenly decided to focus only on making as much gold as they could, it would have the same effect as the small proportion of the players on any server that are farmers.
It all comes back to the developers implementing systems into the economy that make the trade impossible or invalid. D&D is a great example. Loot is so freely available that by level 2 you have more cash than you can possibly use. Farming is just not an issue in D&D and this is the main reason. Whilst its not an elegant solution it is both simple and effective.
I listed another few ideas I had about how this could be approached from a development point of view but I remain adament that the whole argument starts and finishes with the people that create the worlds and therefore the opportunities to exploit the worlds in the first place.
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Zaxtor I don't understand how you can justify it like that. A more apt way of putting is is like this.You take a trip to a theme park. You buy meal tickets that can be used anywhere through out the park as part of your hotel bundle. You use the meal tickets all up before dinner. You goto a person who entered the park legally, but is now selling food without permission. You buy it from him even though he has no permission to sell food in the theme park. It may be cheaper, it may be convenient, but that doesn't make it right just because it is a better deal.The game world, your characters money, your characters items, and the data that is your character is the company's, not yours. You pay a fee for the joy of accessing the character, not for the license to use it for profit. You sell your time, an item, or the access to the character you have become a reseller. Your license doesn't authorize you to be a reseller, you are committing an wrongful act.You may not understand this concept, but that is it. Your whole if i buy gold instead of using the gold thing may equal out in numbers to you, except you are not paying the royalties due. If you still don't understand that concept then all of these sites should really be shutdown just because they illegally use the copyrighted names of games on their menus. That alone should shut them down, if companies had the cash flow to go after all of them in court, but they don't.~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~How does it ruin the economy. Massive inflation rates compared to no farmers and currency sellign on a server. Inflation happens, but gold farmers only put money into the system and do not take it out. They don't use any gold sinks like consumables from the normal market, they don't have epic gear with higher repair costs, they don't spend money on materials just to level up a craft at a loss. That imbalance creates inflation dramatically faster than normal.Before companies started mass farming/duping and such currency was a mino annoyance. Most was sold through auction sites by players closing accounts or students and such trying to scrap up cash to buy a new toy. When it was a small amount of the total currency on any server it didn't affect things that much, but now that there are companies with multiple employees on 24hr rotations it isn't just a little currency it is a massive ammount that should have been slowly been eliminated from the economy through currency sinks, but wasn't.
You also are not understanding a very simple fact of almost every mmo when you just stop to think about it. Let me explain....
Let us assume that Ultima Online NEVER had any gold sellers on eBay, or in any other way. Ultima Online is now 9 years old. Many, many, many thousands of players have maxed out several 7x GM characters on atleast one account. When Ultima Online first started on day #1, every player had say 500 gold. Multiply that 500 gold by say 100,000 initial players. That equals 50,000,000 (50 million) gold in the UO economy on day #1. By day 2 or 3, most of those noob players have went out and hunted and skilled up and found treasure and made more gold. Lets say that most now have 2,000 gold plus some cooler armor etc. Now we have approx. 200 million gold in the economy... and it's only UO day #2! By day number 100 or 500, imagine how this continues to just multiply into insane numbers. Once thousands of characters basically "max out" and are killing red dragons and such by the hundreds, we have tens of thousands of characters aquiring tons more gold than they can ever use. THIS IN ITSELF CREATES A HUGE INFLATION IN ITEM COST AND ECONOMY STRAIN. So now one of these super rich players with tons more gold then he can ever use sells 5 million on eBay to a noob player. The money is still in the game, it hasn't just come from nowhere. It is money that was just sitting there doing nothing with the rich dude. Now it is in the hands of a noob who can actually use the gold for things and items, houses whatever that he needs. If you look at it like this, perhaps atleast some of the gold selling actually HELPS the economy!!
AGAIN, it is not mmorpg.com's fault that the games do not enforce their own user agreements or EULA's. You really cannot blame Mr Noob dude who wants to spend $20 on eBAy to get cool stuff rather then mine for 1 billion hours. And you can't really blame the players that are extremely rich for wanting to sell some of their ridiculous overstash of unneeded gold for cold, hard cash. Again Noob is paying Rich for his time spent aquiring the virtual gold, not the virtual gold itself. There is NOTHING in any user agreement or EULA that states that specifically it is against the rules or policies to buy a players time working for items in the game. They simply state that selling of virtual items is against the rules and POSSIBLY (at the games decision) can lead to an account suspension or ban. But 99% of the time, the games do NOTHING about this trading. Not a suspend, not a ban. THAT IS THE GAMES MAKERS CHOICE... TO DO NOTHING. When they do nothing about it, then their EULA's and their user agreements basically mean nothing and get disrespected due to their non-action to enforce their own rules. Their rules mean nothing, for whatever reason they choose not to enforce their own rules, and therefore farmers and Ebay selling continues more and more as the games economy flurishes.
This is NOT "illegal". I don't understand how you can't understand basic principles and common sense here. I really don't. You just keep screaming "illegal" over and over and over without even stopping to think about it a moment it seems. I dunno.
Also, since you keep insisting that it is so illegal.. well lemme tell you. I played UO when it first came out and about 9 months or so later, I aquired my first million gold in the game. It was hard earned. But I noticed that the eBay prices for gold back then were crazy high. I sold my first ever eBay item in early 1999 as "UO Gold, 1 Million gold pieces!". And I got $375 cash for it. At that time, a million gold was an insane amount of gold. It was more then I could ever use. And I definately was better able to use the real $375 cash. So there you go. Call the police on me. Report me. The eBay auction was back in mid January I believe of '99. I'll hold my breath and wait for the cops to come to my door and cuff me. Come on, get real now.
Comments
*wakes up*
can I get some syrup with your waffle please ?
And check this out...
http://www.nogold.org/forum/viewforum.php?f=1&sid=da6b5a9ac7e0ecdcc276965bdb2c01ed
48 hours since I posted and we have 8 views and 0 response. To say the the people who are concerned about gold farming is a vocal minority is the over statement of the century. Just a handful of bleaters who would rather start a forum about nothing, than address the root cause of the problem, which is wholly and soley the developers themselves.
As a well known Australian comedian once said in relation to changes to the Australian Football League rules on something obscure.
"guess what guys, no one gives a %$#^"
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"MMOs, for people that like think chatting is like a skill or something, rotflol"
http://purepwnage.com
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"Far away across the field, the tolling of the iron bell, calls the faithful to their knees. To hear the softly spoken magic spell" Pink Floyd-Dark Side of the Moon
Originally posted by Vyava
A. The characters are not your, you should really know that by now. You didn't create the graphics for it, the armor for it, the skills you use, the spells you cast, you didn't create any of it after then name. All you did was assemble it from things that you paid to have access to. Your thoughts have nothing to do with your character except the roleplaying you do with it. You own that aspect nothing else, well so far, laws are still unclear here (see end)
No, the characters that I create inside a game are not mine. But my time invested IS mine. And since pretty much all characters start out empty handed, if I go out and mine for metals for 10 hours, sell those metals and make 1 million gold lets say, then those 10 hours of time are certainly of MY time and the million gold I have earned for my character came as a result of that time. So, if I now go on eBay and sell that million gold for $50 lets say, I have essentially made $5 per hour for my time, wouldn't you agree? What if I instead didn't feel like mining for 10 hours but wanted the mining skill and gold, so I paid my little sister $5 an hour to sit on my account and mine to make 1 million gold? Would that be illegal too? It seems to me that both are really pretty close to the same affair. Since everything inside of an mmo is "virtual" and not real, then the only tangible real thing here I see is the time involved to aquire a million gold or to aquire a "blackraven sword" or whatever.
B. An ingame mechanic and out of game action are two different things. Your in game theft example has no real place here.
Is it really an out of game action? (selling gold/virtual items) Don't both parties have to come back into the game medium and transfer the virtual gold/goods to complete the transaction? So stealing vitual items off of a corpse in a game is okay by you because it's all within the game mechanics eh? Hmmm, what if I pay player X $40 real cash to steal your "blackraven" sword and set of "Blackraven armor" from you and give it to me? Then what? Player X is simply stealing the armor and sword from you inside the game as the mechanics allow. So this is all perfectly legal I assume, yet selling gold in eBay is forbidden and against the law? Come on now.
C. If companies had the resources to stop virtual selling they would, but it is impractical right now. Do you know the entire idea behind the serial numbers on crafted items in SWG? It was to track players selling their wares out of game so that they could all be removed from the game when the player selling out of game was discovered. If a company could put a serial number on every item created and every piece of currency within their game then they could instantly remove all ill gotten currency from the game. But immagine the server load. It just won't happen.
Imagine what would happen to the currency selling companies involved? most would just stop and those left would be the one time almost impossible to track sellers in ebay or such. The issue would be much less than it is now. Who would buy a milllion gold and use it on the action house if that gold was tracked since it existed in the game and everything purchased with it suddenly disappeared.
The limiting factor to stop out of game sales is the cost of man power, the server laods and costs for more nodes, costs for possible legal services, and I am sure more things most game companies really could not afford to pay and keep the games alive.
If companies have the resources to stop virtual selling they would??!??? Reeeeallly now? Are you sure about this?? Are you going to tell me that in any given game they cannot easily track these transactions and put a stop to them? Let's take the popular World of Warcraft for example. Let's say I buy 3,000 gold from guy on eBay for $99. This guy comes into WoW and simply uses his farmer character to send my character 3,000 gold via the games mail system. Now, 3,000 gold is a helluva lot of WoW money. These type of transactions that take place every single day on every WoW server and could very easily be tracked. Player X sent Player B 3,000 gold. Hmm Player B has not given or sent player X anything. Must be a out of game sale. Ban player X for selling gold, and ban player B for buying gold out of game and delete the gold. Bam, done deal. Easy as that.
The problem is that the companies who make their rules and user agreements no to do these out of game transactions simply do not enforce their own rules. It would be very easy to stop this, but the fact is that they don't want to lose the monthly fees of all those involved in such activities, it is much more profitable for them as a company to allow this.
In fact, any mmo company could easily change their own game mechanics to not allow such transactions at all. Think about this for a moment. It would be just as easy for a mmo game company to put a trade system in place that only allowed trades that were close in value, for example within a 10% variance. This would also ensure that no players or "noobs" ever got ripped off. Say if Player A put a 10,000 gold value sword in the trade box, then player B would need to put anywhere from 9,000 to 11,000 gold in or items of that value variance. If the trade wasn't of the 10% equal value variance and both players didnt click agree then the trade would not complete. This is just one very simple solution off the top of my head, and I'm sure there are much better solutions available as well. The fact is however that mmo game companies continue to allow complete freedom with trading and giving items/gold... and with that they leave the door wide open for eBay and gold farmers selling game money and items.
D. This is what we call irony.
Yes it is.
For some reason people think money should get you anything time can. The jury is still out on absolute legality as far as this goes really. It isn't really legal or illegal yet. It doesn't really fall into any laws specifically, but it does touch on others.
Do you have the utilitarian rights to the specific combination of data that is your character because you put the effort in to create that combination?
No court seems to have touched that issue yet specifically, or if the time involved is legal to sell.
If all parties have paid access to the service are they allowed to make deals out of game buying/selling somethign that already exists in that game world and only to be used by those who have legitiment access to that game world?
Civil suites since MUDs have gone both ways on this and there realyl isn't a standard yet because it never goes to a higher court, heck would you bother with such a tiny issue at a higher court?
It really isn't legal or illegal right now, just kinda depends on circumstances. One issue a lot of people are not discussing here is that fact that a large amount of the gold and items that are being sold shouldn't exist in the game world and even if it is legal to sell somethign you earned many of the items should not be. Duping and exploiting are a source for alot of the items being sold online and that brings up additional issues.
This greed, jealousy, and gimme-gimme attitude is what is going to destroy the MMO market. Legal or not if buying and selling currency or items becomes standard the MMO market will die. Start adding up the costs per month to play and buy currency and how fast players burn through content. It is about $.50 a day to play an online game now, double or triple that to stay competitive and people will just stop playing.
Look, I totally agree that this mass selling of gold and items only hurts the games. It ruins the economies, completey changes the aspects of the games entirely. It produces tons of farmers in the best hunting grounds of the games. I don't condone the selling of gold and items. I just don't see it as being "illegal". I only see it as it is. It is typicaly a rule in the user agreements that prohibits such activities, and the consequences are usually suspensions or bannings of the said accounts. But with that, the mmo companies don't even bother to enforce their own user agreement rules because of their own greed. So with that well known, can you really blame the virtual goods sellers for taking advantage of this and selling gold and items that they have spent time aquiring? Can you blame Mr Ximbob in Taiwan for spending 56 hours a week earning gold that will be sold so he can feed his family?
While I totally agree with you on most aspects and how much this all ruins the mmos we love, I have to firmly disagree when you start flinging the "illegal" word around aimlessly, especially when it is aimed at innocent parties such as mmorpg.com.
Selling virtual goods and services is typically against the user agreements and rules. It is in no way an "illegal" activity. The biggest crime is not committed by the sellers and buyers of the virtual items, rather it is of the mmo companies to want to prohibit it in their own user agreements and then watch as their own rules are broken and do NOTHING about it...because banning the two players in any transaction costs them atleast two accounts of monthly service fees for as long as those two accounts are banned. If you people wanna point the finger, point it at the most guilty party... the mmo companies who won't even try to enforce their own rules.
- Zaxx
Well I am on record in probably 100+ posts that I am completely against farming and the trade in virtual good 100%.
However I keep hearing point 1 that you made Zax over and over again like it must be true because it gets repeated so often. I have still yet to see one scrap of genuine evidence that supports the notion that it ruins game economies etc etc. Just lots of statements backed up by nothing but more statements.
Players hitting level caps and using thier level 60 resources to twink their noobs, potentially have as much of an impact on game economies as farmers and if you think they dont, then prove it, with something more than your opinion.
As for the second point, well thats been my sole and complete argument all along. Anyone who bleats about farmers and has not bothered to email SOE or Blizzard etc and ask them why they dont police their EULA's has basically no grounds to attack someone like MMORPG.com.
If you agree that the developers are capable of programming these vast complex worlds we inhabit, you must agree that they are capable of securing them adequately to stop or at leadt dramatically reduce the trade in virtual goods. One notion without the other is just fantastic one eyed nonsense.
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"MMOs, for people that like think chatting is like a skill or something, rotflol"
http://purepwnage.com
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"Far away across the field, the tolling of the iron bell, calls the faithful to their knees. To hear the softly spoken magic spell" Pink Floyd-Dark Side of the Moon
[quote]
Originally posted by zaxtor99
Selling virtual goods and services is typically against the user agreements and rules. It is in no way an "illegal" activity. The biggest crime is not committed by the sellers and buyers of the virtual items, rather it is of the mmo companies to want to prohibit it in their own user agreements and then watch as their own rules are broken and do NOTHING about it...because banning the two players in any transaction costs them atleast two accounts of monthly service fees for as long as those two accounts are banned. If you people wanna point the finger, point it at the most guilty party... the mmo companies who won't even try to enforce their own rules.
- Zaxx
[/b][/quote]
There is a legal case that is under close watch right now based on the fact that it is not only virtual items. Every piece of data in that game is on a server rented or owned by someone. The data that is the item you think you have earned is not on a server owned by you or rented by you. The only right you have to it is access until you do something that stops access. You stop paying you have no access to it, if you break a license agreement you lose all access to it.
There you go. That is what you have to wait for. The contention that makes the items being sold no longer virtual and then basically sellign server space they have no connection to. Beyond that I give up. People will try to justify anything anyway they can until they get caught, which is all you are attempting to do.
Peoples paying RL money to buy stuff in MMO never hinder my playing performance, I report some of them but that is where it stop (I usually warn them to stop or to face a report, this stop them right cold, but some even become better friends after).
Uber-Raiders and Gankers ruins my gaming experience on a daily basic.
The day Afterlife, FoH, TR or another uber guild is officially posting ads on this site, I go away extremely fast.
The only good uber guild is an uber guild on another server/game!
Explaining how Afterlife and FoH ruins a game for the vast majority of players is bound to be long, hazarduous and bringing lot of those thugs out to argue.
Let's just say that a server catering to those uber guilds is never going to buy my loyalty.
RL money 'immorality', I don't think it is that immoral that someone spending $10k get a clone of my character and play some toon I used to know, in fact I will even be inclined in helping them, I will be nice and sharing jokes with them as well as advising them. This result in kindness back from them either in game opportunities, in friendship or in talking. However someone making $10k money from selling a pixelised toon is immoral, so all the more reasons to hate those raiding thugs.
Someone buying from IGE can be my friend, I might report him so he better be careful about how he say stuff, I am human and subject to every human default, so if he train me and then tell me he buy something, that might do a nice report...but that is pretty much the limit of it, I see that as a tool, an argument, if they are mean and I want vengeance...that is pretty much the limit of it. I don't care been surrounded by IGE folks, in fact those are very nice folks.
Surround me with Uber Guilds folks just to see the result (Like LoS, prolly would be the same with AL and FoH but I never meet them). I can bet that you will get 3 GM desisting all their responsabilities and leaving this GM job within a few month of 'share' co-existence, there is no talking with uber guild. Only pure raw hatred. They are jealous of my achievements outside of a guild and I am jealous of the gear they are unworthy of earning that the devs throw their way. Pure raw hatred.
Raiders and Gankers ruins a game. IGE, nah, they are funny and amusing and if their customer want to group and a mentor, it is possible that I might be doing it, they don't ruin my gaming experience in any form. The fact they buy items don't affect how those items are earned. Raiding and Ganking affect how those items are earn...thereby raiding and ganking are not tolerated in a 'grouping/soloing' game as far as I am concerned toward the 'uber loot'.
And if you are still unsure...well, who do you think are selling toons to IGE, the raiding thugs of course! The raiding thugs are the problem, not IGE. If the game was not built to cater those raiding thugs, IGE would find it hard to get good deals, as peoples would actually enjoy playing the game. But no...devs encourage IGE beyong anything they can possibly understand with those raiding thugs.
- "If I understand you well, you are telling me until next time. " - Ren
Ehran I agree completely.
The sooner a court case is run to determine the ACTUAL legality of this issue the better. My gut feeling is that it wont be simple.
If the defendants are smart they will argue that the MMO developers have had every opportunity to secure their products and failed. You cant leave $10 lying out in the street for days on end then complain that it was stolen if someone picks it up. Sure it remains your property, but it also remains the property of the police until you lodge a formal claim for it and prove its yours. In other words ownership of something can transfer if the circumstances are right. Its fair to say the circumstances surrounding virtual goods are grey enough at this time that anything is possible in terms of a legal outcome.
I mean lets face it. One of the main concerns in any case of this nature is that the complinant has to prove they suffered a loss and the virtual goods and currency never actually leave the game. They just transfer control from one party to another, they dont disapear, nor are they removed. Its a very very grey area legally.
However the power to run these court cases and get some clarity rests ultimately with the game developers, as does the power to secure their games in the first place.
As far as Im concerned, whislt I can still put up this link :
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"MMOs, for people that like think chatting is like a skill or something, rotflol"
http://purepwnage.com
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"Far away across the field, the tolling of the iron bell, calls the faithful to their knees. To hear the softly spoken magic spell" Pink Floyd-Dark Side of the Moon
Couple things I wanted to clarify: I did see the sticky thread, however for some strange reason my brain did not equate the term 'vritualseller' with these type of services. I'm a college student so that excuses my brain
. Anyways, as regards to the use of the word 'illegal', I suppose it depends on your feelings toward the law and how 'bendable' it is. Personally I take the stance that if you agree to a EULA, then that's a binding contract, and you are breaking that contract if you go against the rules written it it. Is it illegal? Technically yes if you look at it that way. I could have used another word, but I stick by my decision. Alot of people do illegal things without even thinking about it. Changing lanes while turning at an intersection, downloading mp3's/movies, etc. During closed betas most people are given an NDA to sign and agree to, which states that they are not supposed to talk about the game or aspects of it, yet many people do anyways. If you think that some rules are breakable, then maybe you don't consider it illegal, or maybe you don't consider it illegal because it doesn't hurt anyone.
Many of us feel that gold farmers and account sellers can ruin a game, but it still continues to be (it appears) quite profitable for those in the business, and many people still seem to do it. Whenever we start playing a new MMO, one of my buddies always eventually ends up buying gold online so he can get all the high end items in order to be 'twinked' and uberpowerful. I find this ruins the experience for me because I know he hasn't earned any of it and he pretty much skipped content in the game. However there'll always be people who want to skip to the end of the game or pay cash to increase their power.
A question I might add is, do you lose respect for mmorpg.com when they accept ads for ingame sellers? Should mmorpg.com be more worried about it's reputation as a news source, or how much money it's bringing in from ads?
(As a side note, even though I now realize that there is a sticky thread dealing with more or less the same subject, it seems we are having a decent conversation about the topic anyways, so I stick by my decision, though next time I'll check twice
"Because it's easier to nitpick something than to be constructive." -roach5000
I really don't care for gold sellers or buyers but the fact is they can do what they do because A.) EULA's are not laws and they cannot violate local, state or federal consumer rights laws. B.) The sale of time spent while playing a game/trading in game in exchange for money is not against the law and cannot be prevented via a EULA.
Games I've played/tried out:WAR, LOTRO, Tabula Rasa, AoC, EQ1, EQ2, WoW, Vangaurd, FFXI, D&DO, Lineage 2, Saga Of Ryzom, EvE Online, DAoC, Guild Wars,Star Wars Galaxies, Hell Gate London, Auto Assault, Grando Espada ( AKA SoTNW ), Archlord, CoV/H, Star Trek Online, APB, Champions Online, FFXIV, Rift Online, GW2.
Game(s) I Am Currently Playing:
GW2 (+LoL and BF3)
Its a question of numbers just likie it is for the MMO developers.... and there in lies the problem.
If any business is to make money or even cover its costs, they have to appeal to the largest available market segment. Believe it or not the pepople seriously concerned about virtual trading wouldnt make up 1% of the gaming community. So if you worried too much about what they thought it would be commerical suicide.
As for the credibility issue. Becoming right wing apologists hasnt hurt Fox.
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"MMOs, for people that like think chatting is like a skill or something, rotflol"
http://purepwnage.com
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"Far away across the field, the tolling of the iron bell, calls the faithful to their knees. To hear the softly spoken magic spell" Pink Floyd-Dark Side of the Moon
Exactly M1sf1t. This is exactly what I have been trying to say in a lot less words actually.
Now, again I ask this question:
If I am playing Ultima Online (which also has a user agreement against out of game sales of the virtual property) and I am mining for valorite ingots which I then trade to smiths in the game for GOLD... and it takes me say 10 hours to get enough ingots to equal 1 million gold (example only)...
If I decide I dont have the time to spend mining for 10 damn hours, and I pay my little sister or friend to sit at my computer and do the the work for me, so that 10 hours later I have 1 million gold... Is this illegal??
Most will agree that the above example is not illegal, even though essentially I am paying for the 1 million gold and I at say $5 an hour to my friend to mine, I am paying him $50 for that million gold.
Now if I see 1 million gold on eBay instead for $20 from a Chinese farm, then I will save myself lots of cash. But here, this is actually forbidden in the EULA and user agreement.. but it is actually no different at all. I am still paying for someone elses time, but here I am saving lots of cash because the chinese farmers will work for a lot less money then my sister or friend. But I am still essentially paying them for their time so that I don't have to spend 10 damn hours mining to get that million gold.
Now I pose a few questions directly related to my above hypothetical situation...
A) Is paying $20 for that million gold really gonna hurt UOs economy? I fully intended to get that million gold anyhow... whether it be by doing the work myself, paying my friend, kicking my sisters butt and making her do it for a candy bar, or paying the Chinese farmer guy.
C) In this example, if I had no other means to earn the money I wanted or needed in the game besides going and spending my 50,000th game hour mining or fishing or whatever... if I actually had to do the work myself, maybe I would quit UO altogether. Now I have a nice option to get some cash quickly for really only about $2 per hour for my time. Then I get the gold so I can buy what I need/want in the game, I stay happy, and so I continue my UO subscription as a happy customer... Where as if I didnt have that eBay gold buying option available I might have just quit due to having no gold and not wanting to do tasks I didnt enjoy in the game to reaquire the needed gold. So isn't this certainly a plausable scenario?
I am just thinking out loud. What do you all think of my questions here?
I understand that selling virtual items is against most mmos EULAS and user agreements. But my question now is DOES IT REALLY HURT THESE GAMES AS MUCH AS EVERYONE SEEMS TO THINK?
- Zaxx
Zaxtor I don't understand how you can justify it like that. A more apt way of putting is is like this.
You take a trip to a theme park. You buy meal tickets that can be used anywhere through out the park as part of your hotel bundle. You use the meal tickets all up before dinner. You goto a person who entered the park legally, but is now selling food without permission. You buy it from him even though he has no permission to sell food in the theme park. It may be cheaper, it may be convenient, but that doesn't make it right just because it is a better deal.
The game world, your characters money, your characters items, and the data that is your character is the company's, not yours. You pay a fee for the joy of accessing the character, not for the license to use it for profit. You sell your time, an item, or the access to the character you have become a reseller. Your license doesn't authorize you to be a reseller, you are committing an wrongful act.
You may not understand this concept, but that is it. Your whole if i buy gold instead of using the gold thing may equal out in numbers to you, except you are not paying the royalties due.
If you still don't understand that concept then all of these sites should really be shutdown just because they illegally use the copyrighted names of games on their menus. That alone should shut them down, if companies had the cash flow to go after all of them in court, but they don't.
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How does it ruin the economy. Massive inflation rates compared to no farmers and currency sellign on a server. Inflation happens, but gold farmers only put money into the system and do not take it out. They don't use any gold sinks like consumables from the normal market, they don't have epic gear with higher repair costs, they don't spend money on materials just to level up a craft at a loss. That imbalance creates inflation dramatically faster than normal.
Before companies started mass farming/duping and such currency was a mino annoyance. Most was sold through auction sites by players closing accounts or students and such trying to scrap up cash to buy a new toy. When it was a small amount of the total currency on any server it didn't affect things that much, but now that there are companies with multiple employees on 24hr rotations it isn't just a little currency it is a massive ammount that should have been slowly been eliminated from the economy through currency sinks, but wasn't.
Wow Zax thats great. You have basically proved what I have been saying all along but couldnt be bothered spelling it out like you have.
Technically the act of farming and selling gold should have no appreciable difference to the games economy that could be measured.
Lets face it if every "normal" player suddenly decided to focus only on making as much gold as they could, it would have the same effect as the small proportion of the players on any server that are farmers.
It all comes back to the developers implementing systems into the economy that make the trade impossible or invalid. D&D is a great example. Loot is so freely available that by level 2 you have more cash than you can possibly use. Farming is just not an issue in D&D and this is the main reason. Whilst its not an elegant solution it is both simple and effective.
I listed another few ideas I had about how this could be approached from a development point of view but I remain adament that the whole argument starts and finishes with the people that create the worlds and therefore the opportunities to exploit the worlds in the first place.
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"MMOs, for people that like think chatting is like a skill or something, rotflol"
http://purepwnage.com
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"Far away across the field, the tolling of the iron bell, calls the faithful to their knees. To hear the softly spoken magic spell" Pink Floyd-Dark Side of the Moon
Originally posted by Erahn
You also are not understanding a very simple fact of almost every mmo when you just stop to think about it. Let me explain....
Let us assume that Ultima Online NEVER had any gold sellers on eBay, or in any other way. Ultima Online is now 9 years old. Many, many, many thousands of players have maxed out several 7x GM characters on atleast one account. When Ultima Online first started on day #1, every player had say 500 gold. Multiply that 500 gold by say 100,000 initial players. That equals 50,000,000 (50 million) gold in the UO economy on day #1. By day 2 or 3, most of those noob players have went out and hunted and skilled up and found treasure and made more gold. Lets say that most now have 2,000 gold plus some cooler armor etc. Now we have approx. 200 million gold in the economy... and it's only UO day #2! By day number 100 or 500, imagine how this continues to just multiply into insane numbers. Once thousands of characters basically "max out" and are killing red dragons and such by the hundreds, we have tens of thousands of characters aquiring tons more gold than they can ever use. THIS IN ITSELF CREATES A HUGE INFLATION IN ITEM COST AND ECONOMY STRAIN. So now one of these super rich players with tons more gold then he can ever use sells 5 million on eBay to a noob player. The money is still in the game, it hasn't just come from nowhere. It is money that was just sitting there doing nothing with the rich dude. Now it is in the hands of a noob who can actually use the gold for things and items, houses whatever that he needs. If you look at it like this, perhaps atleast some of the gold selling actually HELPS the economy!!
AGAIN, it is not mmorpg.com's fault that the games do not enforce their own user agreements or EULA's. You really cannot blame Mr Noob dude who wants to spend $20 on eBAy to get cool stuff rather then mine for 1 billion hours. And you can't really blame the players that are extremely rich for wanting to sell some of their ridiculous overstash of unneeded gold for cold, hard cash. Again Noob is paying Rich for his time spent aquiring the virtual gold, not the virtual gold itself. There is NOTHING in any user agreement or EULA that states that specifically it is against the rules or policies to buy a players time working for items in the game. They simply state that selling of virtual items is against the rules and POSSIBLY (at the games decision) can lead to an account suspension or ban. But 99% of the time, the games do NOTHING about this trading. Not a suspend, not a ban. THAT IS THE GAMES MAKERS CHOICE... TO DO NOTHING. When they do nothing about it, then their EULA's and their user agreements basically mean nothing and get disrespected due to their non-action to enforce their own rules. Their rules mean nothing, for whatever reason they choose not to enforce their own rules, and therefore farmers and Ebay selling continues more and more as the games economy flurishes.
This is NOT "illegal". I don't understand how you can't understand basic principles and common sense here. I really don't. You just keep screaming "illegal" over and over and over without even stopping to think about it a moment it seems. I dunno.
Also, since you keep insisting that it is so illegal.. well lemme tell you. I played UO when it first came out and about 9 months or so later, I aquired my first million gold in the game. It was hard earned. But I noticed that the eBay prices for gold back then were crazy high. I sold my first ever eBay item in early 1999 as "UO Gold, 1 Million gold pieces!". And I got $375 cash for it. At that time, a million gold was an insane amount of gold. It was more then I could ever use. And I definately was better able to use the real $375 cash. So there you go. Call the police on me. Report me. The eBay auction was back in mid January I believe of '99. I'll hold my breath and wait for the cops to come to my door and cuff me.
Come on, get real now.
- Zaxx