You completely ignored my point regarding Monopoly;
No, I didn't. Your point was that Gold Farming is "cheating".
My point is "Why?"
What is the issue with it? Why is it against the rules? Just because the games company says so?
How does it hurt the game? Or other players?
The only convincing arguement I see against it (even from Developers) is that Gold Farmers "chat spam".
All the other issues are to do with game design.
Originally posted by Owyn
... lets use chess instead then. Would you keep playing with someone who switches pieces every time you turn your head away? Or would you play ANY game with someone who routinely cheats?
Look, I play a lot of games. Not all the games I play are "balanced" - and that's OK - so long as you know the rules before you start. Some games are actually MORE interesting and challenging because of this.
Would I play Chess with someone who switches pieces?
YYes, virtual economies are generally weak and easily abused. So rules are set into place to help prevent that sort of abuse. People who break those rules for profit are hurting every player. Should the devs work at developing a better economic model? Perhaps. But should the players feel like they are being ethical cheating at the game because there is a flaw in the design? I would think not. Yes, those economies will eventually run into trouble anyway, even without gold farmers. But it will happen much, much faster with them.
So, it comes down to design, or rather bad design by the Developers.
So the "rules" are a Stop-Gap measure to cover the flaws in that design?
Okay, fair enough. But the long term solution then would be to deal with those flaws - not continue to waste resources repeatedly hunting down and banning "players" who don't care anyway?
Originally posted by Gyrus No, I didn't. Your point was that Gold Farming is "cheating".
My point is "Why?" What is the issue with it? Why is it against the rules? Just because the games company says so?
How does it hurt the game? Or other players?
The only convincing arguement I see against it (even from Developers) is that Gold Farmers "chat spam".
All the other issues are to do with game design.
Reasons:
Because gold farmers steal peoples accounts. they now have a vested interest in making money by using corrupted websites to hack peoples accounts or fake emails to entice people to give up their account information. Then they steal their items/money/characters and resell it.
This also causes more overhead on customer service who have to deal with restoring accounts which in turns increases the wait time for people with real in game problems.
Because gold farmers run 24 hour unattended farming macros to get currency all day long. games are designed with economies to support typical playstyles which should generate X amount of currency in a play session. Spread that across all the players to get an average. When people use real world money to buy currency that is not limited to an average persons play time, because a gold farmer can run multiple accounts to meet demands of as many people that will buy, which will cause inflation. Now a normal player must pay for inflated prices while still only able to earn X currency per hour.
because a gold farmer will exploit a currency dupe bug to the extreme. See examples of SWG/EQ2/Vanguard where the total amount of exploited currency in the game exceeded the legitimate currency in the game. In one case in EQ2 exploiters duped 20% of the entire combined ingame economy in ONE weekend. Just think about that. It's not like that can be dealt with easily either once the money gets into the economy. Roll the server back and legit players lose what they were doing or remove it all and some legit player lose their money or lie and say you got it all without legit players losing anything which is impossible.
Because gold farmers use stolen credit cards or just charge backs to their farming accounts which is a net loss that is eventually passed on to the entire player base. It may come in increased costs or less money devoted to developing new content. Either way you are funding their business even if you don't buy their product.
Because all those automated farming characters take up a slot on the server. Believe it or not a server can only hold so many connections and each farmer is one less real person to add to the community, guilds, PvP, etc.
Because they spam their currency selling advertisements in game that annoy the crap out of people and break immersion
because a gold seller will not hesitate to break the EULA in any fashion that nets them income. They will stomp all over another players play session if necessary to get what they want. Ninja looting, kill stealing, training another player or just general griefing to make someone leave an area they want to farm. They are not there to play the game and your playtime quality doesn't matter to them.
I have listed a few reason that show currency sellers have a negative impact on the entire playerbase universally so that a few people can get a leg up or skip doing something they don't want to.
Can you name the benefits that currency sellers offer the playerbase as a whole?
Daffido11, your posts lists a lot of negative things in MMOs - are all these things attributed to Gold Farmers exclusively?
Are you seriously saying ALL Gold Farmers hack and steal accounts?
That's a bit like saying ALL PvPers are gankers?
Or how about ALL players who play Pirates are immature teenage griefers?
As an example the issue of Chat Spam comes up as an arguement against Gold Farmers. Yet I have seen societies recruiting in chat too. I find this chat spam just as annoying - yet is that OK if they are not Gold Farmers?
You mention 24 hour macros?
That may be true in other MMOs but in PotBS - it was FLS who designed in the 24 hour macro - by having labour accumulate in real time?
The economy 'dupe' as you call it is a game exploit and I have addressed this in post above. Sure - maybe not honest - but as much the "fault" of the developer if you want to point fingers?
It goes against the intent of the game? Oh really? How do you know? How do you know that the developer didn't put it in there specifically to allow players to make / recover a lot of money quickly? (There might be a valid design reason for this). The fact that a few players then 'exploit' this to the extreme is something the designer must account for.
Stolen Credit Cards? This is a criminal matter. The Developers need not deal with this. Let the charge go through (don't ban them) and the problem will land in the lap of the Credit card Company and the local law enforcement.
Are you seriously saying that ALL Gold Farmers use stolen Credit Cards? And they ALL get chargebacks?
Taking up a slot on the server. OK - how is that different to a merchant player who goes AFK all the time taking up a slot? So long as the game comapany gets payed???
Then you mention spam... (fair point - so target the spammers)
Then you mention a host of negative in game behaviours I have seen from any number of players - not just "Gold Farmers".
Positive things about Gold Farmers?
Well, I don't use them myself, because for me it's about personal achievement - but they do allow a new player to get a head start quickly and for very little effort (just some cash)
- Now as I say, that's not my thing - but many players want to do this because they hate grind etc. My personal view is that if you are THAT impatient you should avoid MMOs... but that's just my opinion.
It also provides a way for players to "sell out" of a subscription they no longer want.
- So, if I sub up for 12 months and 2 months later decide I don't like the game - I can sell my stuff and get something back on my sub (assuming the company does not allow refunds)
So long as they don't use exploits, hacks etc they are the ultimate crafters.
If you don't use them - it doesn't really effect you though does it?
So what if little Johnny uses Mommy's CC to purchase 1000000 dubloon to buy a 1st rate ship of the line and a level 50 character?
He has no idea how to use it and will get pwned.
If that's the way he likes to play - I pity him and his family.
Kudos to them! I love it! Hit the buyers early, put a fear into them (need more than a 24 hour ban though) and you will see the sellers start to dwindle without a decent market here. Below is reposted from VN ***********************************************
I don't wanna piss on your parade , but you cannot scare gold sellers , its chinese farmers doing a job they get paid to do , if you ban a account they just create a new one and continue from there.
I kind of agree with Gyrus. Gold Farming is teh result of bad design. People who suggest it causes inflation apparently haven't yet figured out that most video games don't actually have an economy. IN a real economy, there is a FINITE amount of money in circulation. If more is introduced into circulation, the value of each individual note goes down.
In a lot of these video games, money is CONSTANTLY being produced from thin air. Inflation is going to happen regardless of Gold Farming because the entire system is forcing it by not limiting the amount of money inside it. In a perfect world, the would be very finite amounts of "gold". That would create a true economy, where this set amount got passed around from vendor to vendor and player to player. Eventually, you'd find a situation very similar to the world we see now...where some people would be very well off and others would never be.
But as long as these games still introduce money into the system from thin air....ingame economy will just never exist.
Actually, most games do have an economy pre built into them, and its true, gold farming can upset it. Most games have money "drains" built into them to take cash out of the economy. In DAOC it was the housing system, where a major house could cost 10 plat a week to maintain. In WOW its the mount system, where players spend a fortune that vanishes into thin air.
The problem is farmers rarely spend money on such drains, they throw it all back into the economy, so their effect is more profound than a normal player and it is harder for the developers to adjust the drains to account for their impact w/o hurting the legitimate player.
I'm not against gold buying though, I think the effects are manageable, and they actually impart some benefits like selling rare item drops at a great frequency than a player would, since again, they rarely use them. They also provide a lot of raw materials for sale in the economy that might never get there if left up to players to farm, since that tends to be more boring.
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
I'm not sure gold farmers sit and hack accounts. Why hack the account when you get money from that person? Thats just stupid.
But we have group of people that make fake mails and sometimes people don't see it's fake until it's too late.
That happens a lot with Bank accounts. You can read about it in the News or watch it on TV, still everytime there is a new fake Bank mail asking for login and password 200,000 people fall for it...
Played: From Earth & Beyond, Anarchy Online, Matrix Online, Star Wars Galaxies, World of Warcraft, Age of Conan, Tabula Rasa (Beta), EvE Online, City of Villians, Atlantica Online, Guild Wars, Lineage 2, Pirates of the Burning Sea, PlanetSide, RF Online, Second Life, Fallen Earth.
However, I am a potential paying subscriber that they can collect dollar one from. However, when I turn in a customer service ticket regarding server connectability issues and request the restoration of a single durability point for a problem on their end they respond "Sorry, your fukked, thank you for the bug report, send us your $15/month, have a nice day". No I don't think they replied like that. Not there exact words, true, but it was the general thought behind their pretty, politically correct phrases.
There is many MMO companys that bans goldsellers.
So what is with the deja vu and following Sigil's business model?
The game has not even been out a week.
Exactly...
Serrvers are unstable, there are bugs to quash, and customer service is performing poorly.
Have you asked those that have used customer service and recieved it well or are you only looking at those that have issues with it and judge it by that. For your Apple example, do you think they only have positive reviews about their customer service.
You miss the point. The point is not about what company reviews are, the point is about what a company is willing to do on the back end to service customers. Any business that concentrates on the front end (sales) to the exclusion of the back end (customer service) will not be in business very long. Apple is at least taking a major step toward using their customer service to attract new business by word of mouth, and to retain existing customers. That is not the business model being used by a great many MMORPG companies, to include Flying Labs. Your arguement seems to be that the status quo is acceptable customer service?
Banning gold farmers, and allocating customer service assets to take immediate action, as opposed to assisting subscribers, is the same direction Sigil went.
They are assisting subscribers, ofcourse they why wouldn't they.
Banning gold farmers is an exercise in futility and does not assist subscribers. Look at the game mechanics. When a player loses that 84 gun ship of the line do you seriously think they are going to go back to their default cutter and start ratting and questing to get the doubloons to replace it? Of course their not. Some will get another from their society, and some will get the doubloons to replace it from a gold farmer. Some may do both. That is just part of the game design, and banning non-paying gold farmers over and over and over and over again will not correct the situation.
I noted the customer service response time by a poster that reported gold seller spamming, as opposed to my customer service report response time, and can see the priority.
I have had response time withing the hour and got that issue fixed withing the hour. The reason that the gold spam was responded to can be that it is easier, and faster, to fix.
But it's not fixed, that gold farmer was probably up and running on another account within the hour.
But still even though your issue had longer response time does not equal that they don't care. Your issue could be something that they have to think and discuss about first.
You missed my point, their reply WAS that they were not going to do anything about their server losing connectivity and my ship being sunk.
Priorities, my friend. Gold sellers are not paying subscribers, Flying Labs, in their own admission, does not collect dollar one off of them. Basically, they acknowledge they have server connectibility problems, but will do nothing to correct the problem it caused for the potential subsciber. They are unwilling to restore one durability point on a level 14 cutter (out of 4 durability points total), not a game imbalancing issue.
Which is not that strange, sorry for your loss, but if they would start to do that it could be abused in the end. In which case it is better to keep a straigth line from starters.
So what? Look, at launch they could have instructed customer service to replace any players ship that was sunk, period, either by fault of the game, or in a PvP battle. Each and every player can utilize this service, there is no "unfair advantage". Post launch they could instruct customer service to replace up to 3 or 4 durability points per account (and set up a database to track the accounts, Apple only replaces one Ipod per customer, the second one is the customer problem), for an unlimited time. So your level 84 gun ship of the line gets sunk, and they replace 1 durability point so you can rat higher level stuff to get the cash to replace it. So what, now the player doesn't need to run to the gold farmer, or can run out and get in another PvP battle again. That's called fun, customers play to have fun. They don't play to get flogged merilessly by a cat-o-nine tails.
They told me that was not a warrantee issue, but that they would give me a brand new $300 ipod anyway. THAT is customer service!
Awfully nice of them. So if I buy cheap broken Ipods on ebay I can go and get a new one, not likely.
There is something called "goodwill" but that is not used regurarly.
Apple's policy is to replace one ipod per customer, and their computer system tracks each ipod by seriel number. They can tell when it was bought, and where. If your ipod is stolen, they can tell you the IP address that is currently using it. If you think it is that easy to scam Apple, be my guest and buy those broken ipods on ebay and go for it. That is what makes customer goodwill possible in the computer driven information age.
That is good PR for Apple, and brings them the new customers at the expense of the competition..
SOE offered me 1½ months free subscription even though they didn't need to, is that the same as expecting them to do it to all, no.
That is called earning customer goodwill. I am so glad that you brought SOE into the arguement. They had this game called SWG that they absolutely destroyed customer goodwill with, destroyed word of mouth advertising, and created a debacle for themselves. But they learned from it, they listened to their customer base and took EQ 2 in a different direction, making it argueably one of the best MMORPGs in existance. The offer you received is part of establishing customer goodwill. Should you expect it, no. Should they expect your goodwill without it, no. Look at how they are trying to regain customer goodwill with Vanguard. Do they need to do that, no. Do you need to try Vanguard again, no. See the point, don't treat your customers like shit and they will stay with you.
Pissing people off one customer at a time.......
You are assuming that FLS would not care about their customer based on that they did not help you. Sorry but that is black/white thinking and is in any cases wrong.
If they cared about their customer service they would have helped me. How is this black/white thinking? If they don't help resolve customer problems does this mply to you that they care about customer service.
Your story could be used with any company, not only MMO's, out there.
Bingo, you just got one of my points. So, are you trying to say that it is okay for MMORPG companies to not be flexible in responding to customer service complaints cause everyone does it? It's acceptable to tell customers to 'goto Helen Waite" because that is the standard? It is acceptable to make that initial sale and not bother with service?
Look No offense but if your arguing if it is "legal" or not well your hitting a wall. When you sign the Eula you sign a binding contract with that game, Also Games, if they wanted to, could go after after "Profits resulting from ingame content" If the gamming companies truly wanted to take someone to court and make sure they never did it again i am sure they could and win.
When you sign a EULA, read it once over, don;t skim but READ it. You will notice it has alot of in it about how they own everything and in some cases even state that they will place fishing software to see what kind of programs and websites you visit to "Better service our customers and anticipate their needs" Most games don;t but some do and it is growing. When you, the consumer click the "Accept" button, it is as good as signing a piece of paper and sayign you understand everything in there.
Look. All Game content is in fact Licenced and owned by the develepoers of the game. Plain and simple. That includes gold and other things.
And i skimmed over this thread but the before mentioned " the farmers just count the charge as fraudulent and get refunded method" May work wit One CC or 2, but that CC will notice that you contually tried to get the same company and why is it fruadulent?? Suddenly they investigate it and notice that you yourself are falsy reporting fraudlent charges?? Consider yourself in court or paying a hefty fine for a fals report cause the CC companies defend you, but if you screw around with they they bring the hammer down.
people will farm gold, its som ppls way to make money and other ppls way to save time, But in the end, The company that makes the game holds all of the cards and it all belongs to them. Remember that.
To put it in a frame of reference that everyone knows, the famed NFL line about " Any reprduction without the expressed written permission of the NFL is Blah Blah Blah" The Game developers have that in the EULA, And the NFL goes after people who Show the games without their knowledge because its a business and in business you have to be able to control your product. There will be more court cases dealign with the internet when the juctice system comes around and the rights of Ownership will be fought about, but in the end, if the game developers lose the In game content... There will be no more games. They will shut them down because the profit margins will not be worth it. So If these Gold farmers win, Everyone else loses... Remember that.
All very fine arguments. However, they forget one very basic principle. Without the time and effort of the "farmer", the item or coin in question would not exist on the server. This most basic of principles will require judges to determine whether or not the EULA is legally enforceable. The company claims to own all digital rights to items and coin, yet these items do not appear on servers without the work of the players. This brings legitimate question into the ownership rights of digital items.
Not to be rude, but your "facts" are by no means set in stone. Judges are smart people for the most part, and they also don't have the anti-RMT bias that so many of the posters do in this forum. When this issue finally arrives in a courtroom of significance (no cases as of yet gives any true precedence to judge other cases), I can assure you that judges will take far more into account then a catch-all EULA. Specifically, judges will wonder just how a developer thinks they have ownership rights of digital items that don't even exist if it were not for the time and effort of the players.
Don't fool yourselves, anti-RMTers. This issue is far from settled in a legal sense.
As an aside, if the gold farmers "win", your argument that MMOs will fail is just plain closed minded and short sighted. I'll use the example of the Station Exchange, which has had millions of dollars in transactions. EQ2 is far from dead, and from what I understand their most popular servers are the RMT servers.
It is obvious that you have a closed minded bias on RMT. You simply can't make the paradigm shift as to what would be if RMT was supported. You're going to have to try and wrap your mind around this in order to get a truly complete and informed view of the situation. You have to understand that supporting RMT CREATES JOBS! Not just Asian jobs either. There's plenty of people who want to pay for stuff, and there's plenty of people of all kinds of nationalities who'd like to make some spare cash selling stuff. Supporting RMT is a direct boost to the overall world economy, and we've already seen instances where RMT in video games can provide people with real decent income jobs. Just take second life and project entropia as further examples. The problem with those games, though, is that they're not "games". They are just virtual worlds. When "games" finally get to virtual world status, and provide compelling fun content, that's when RMT is really going to take off and create its own niche sector of the economy. Indeed, the age of RMT is just beginning. I hope you're prepared to deal with it.
Kudos to them! I love it! Hit the buyers early, put a fear into them (need more than a 24 hour ban though) and you will see the sellers start to dwindle without a decent market here. Below is reposted from VN ***********************************************
I don't wanna piss on your parade , but you cannot scare gold sellers , its chinese farmers doing a job they get paid to do , if you ban a account they just create a new one and continue from there.
I never said you could scare the sellers. I said scare the buyers. I also stated that a 24 hour ban would not be enough. But if buyers start getting banned outright (permenant), then the risk may outweigh the reward and the sellers would have less customers.
Obviously this isn't going to stop sellers and buyers, but any move against it is a positive move imo.
Well, I don't use them myself, because for me it's about personal achievement - but they do allow a new player to get a head start quickly and for very little effort (just some cash)
- Now as I say, that's not my thing - but many players want to do this because they hate grind etc. My personal view is that if you are THAT impatient you should avoid MMOs... but that's just my opinion. It also provides a way for players to "sell out" of a subscription they no longer want.
- So, if I sub up for 12 months and 2 months later decide I don't like the game - I can sell my stuff and get something back on my sub (assuming the company does not allow refunds)
So long as they don't use exploits, hacks etc they are the ultimate crafters.
If you don't use them - it doesn't really effect you though does it?
So what if little Johnny uses Mommy's CC to purchase 1000000 dubloon to buy a 1st rate ship of the line and a level 50 character?
He has no idea how to use it and will get pwned.
If that's the way he likes to play - I pity him and his family. But I can still have fun regardless.
First, just because other players can do some of the same negative behaviors of gold farmers doesn't somehow make it ok for either party. If a user breaks the EULA they can get banned and that fear keeps most people in line. Gold farmers are in this for business and enact these negatives on a GRAND scale in comparison to some problem players. There is a mountain of difference.
Second, Of the positives you list
A) someone hates "the grind". No reason other people should suffer negatives of gold farming because one person doesn't want to play the same game. I also agree, they should find another game. Being lazy isn't a valid excuse.
"sell out" to recoup some money. If the company handles it sure (though personally I wouldn't care for it), but then we wouldn't be talking about gold farmers anymore.. Otherwise accounts sales/trades make up a huge portion of customer service complains and service tickets. It is easy to scam someones account or just call up the company and tell them your account was stolen. Playing an MMO isn't an investment. This is about the worst reason possible to be honest, because it just feeds into the account hacking and scams.
C) new player head start. What is wrong with just playing the game? No one needs a head start, especially if it causes so many problems to the game.
The effects l listed in my other post do affect my, your and everyone elses gameplay, regardless of if we buy currency or not. That is the problem and why I posted it. Why should little johnny be able to pay someone to play the game for him and everyone else be affected by it in a negative manner. People being lazy are not "positives" of currency farmers.
Pissing people off one customer at a time....... You are assuming that FLS would not care about their customer based on that they did not help you. Sorry but that is black/white thinking and is in any cases wrong. If they cared about their customer service they would have helped me. How is this black/white thinking? If they don't help resolve customer problems does this mply to you that they care about customer service.
I meant keeping an open mind and see how it pans out, ofcourse they can do a mistake. But it is to early to tell how much focus this is.
Your story could be used with any company, not only MMO's, out there.
Bingo, you just got one of my points.
I actually lost my point in my own arguments there, somewhere, all by myself. But I meant to argue the point to keep an open mind and see if they actually are focusing on wrong things. There can be references made to Sigil but I think it is to early to make. There is much more differences in the foundation(?) for that.
So, are you trying to say that it is okay for MMORPG companies to not be flexible in responding to customer service complaints cause everyone does it? It's acceptable to tell customers to 'goto Helen Waite" because that is the standard? It is acceptable to make that initial sale and not bother with service?
No I don't think that was what I intended to say, but maybe I said it as a figure of speech.
But with the durabilty poiny it can be discussed.
"-Ok, there is problems now with stressed servers so give it back for this time period.
-If we do that, can we fall in a trap as it can be abused?"
IMO I'm 50/50 on that, refit durability(for an initial period of time) or keep a straight line with rejecting it.
Look No offense but if your arguing if it is "legal" or not well your hitting a wall. When you sign the Eula you sign a binding contract with that game, Also Games, if they wanted to, could go after after "Profits resulting from ingame content" If the gamming companies truly wanted to take someone to court and make sure they never did it again i am sure they could and win.
When you sign a EULA, read it once over, don;t skim but READ it. You will notice it has alot of in it about how they own everything and in some cases even state that they will place fishing software to see what kind of programs and websites you visit to "Better service our customers and anticipate their needs" Most games don;t but some do and it is growing. When you, the consumer click the "Accept" button, it is as good as signing a piece of paper and sayign you understand everything in there.
Look. All Game content is in fact Licenced and owned by the develepoers of the game. Plain and simple. That includes gold and other things.
And i skimmed over this thread but the before mentioned " the farmers just count the charge as fraudulent and get refunded method" May work wit One CC or 2, but that CC will notice that you contually tried to get the same company and why is it fruadulent?? Suddenly they investigate it and notice that you yourself are falsy reporting fraudlent charges?? Consider yourself in court or paying a hefty fine for a fals report cause the CC companies defend you, but if you screw around with they they bring the hammer down.
people will farm gold, its som ppls way to make money and other ppls way to save time, But in the end, The company that makes the game holds all of the cards and it all belongs to them. Remember that.
To put it in a frame of reference that everyone knows, the famed NFL line about " Any reprduction without the expressed written permission of the NFL is Blah Blah Blah" The Game developers have that in the EULA, And the NFL goes after people who Show the games without their knowledge because its a business and in business you have to be able to control your product. There will be more court cases dealign with the internet when the juctice system comes around and the rights of Ownership will be fought about, but in the end, if the game developers lose the In game content... There will be no more games. They will shut them down because the profit margins will not be worth it. So If these Gold farmers win, Everyone else loses... Remember that.
All very fine arguments. However, they forget one very basic principle. Without the time and effort of the "farmer", the item or coin in question would not exist on the server. This most basic of principles will require judges to determine whether or not the EULA is legally enforceable. The company claims to own all digital rights to items and coin, yet these items do not appear on servers without the work of the players. This brings legitimate question into the ownership rights of digital items.
Not to be rude, but your "facts" are by no means set in stone. Judges are smart people for the most part, and they also don't have the anti-RMT bias that so many of the posters do in this forum. When this issue finally arrives in a courtroom of significance (no cases as of yet gives any true precedence to judge other cases), I can assure you that judges will take far more into account then a catch-all EULA. Specifically, judges will wonder just how a developer thinks they have ownership rights of digital items that don't even exist if it were not for the time and effort of the players.
Don't fool yourselves, anti-RMTers. This issue is far from settled in a legal sense.
As an aside, if the gold farmers "win", your argument that MMOs will fail is just plain closed minded and short sighted. I'll use the example of the Station Exchange, which has had millions of dollars in transactions. EQ2 is far from dead, and from what I understand their most popular servers are the RMT servers.
It is obvious that you have a closed minded bias on RMT. You simply can't make the paradigm shift as to what would be if RMT was supported. You're going to have to try and wrap your mind around this in order to get a truly complete and informed view of the situation. You have to understand that supporting RMT CREATES JOBS! Not just Asian jobs either. There's plenty of people who want to pay for stuff, and there's plenty of people of all kinds of nationalities who'd like to make some spare cash selling stuff. Supporting RMT is a direct boost to the overall world economy, and we've already seen instances where RMT in video games can provide people with real decent income jobs. Just take second life and project entropia as further examples. The problem with those games, though, is that they're not "games". They are just virtual worlds. When "games" finally get to virtual world status, and provide compelling fun content, that's when RMT is really going to take off and create its own niche sector of the economy. Indeed, the age of RMT is just beginning. I hope you're prepared to deal with it.
I know you weren't responding to me but I would be totally in favor of RMT specific servers for every game out there, I would simply stick to non-RMT servers just like I do in EQ2. I'm happy, they are happy, it's all good. That is probably the best course of action for these companies... it almost (not quite) eliminated the RMT spam from the regular servers in EQ2. It's a win/win
I'm not sure gold farmers sit and hack accounts. Why hack the account when you get money from that person? Thats just stupid. But we have group of people that make fake mails and sometimes people don't see it's fake until it's too late. That happens a lot with Bank accounts. You can read about it in the News or watch it on TV, still everytime there is a new fake Bank mail asking for login and password 200,000 people fall for it...
Actually, I play EQ 2, and have seen the gold farmers in action. They don't hack accounts, and really do try not to piss the players off, as these same players is where they draw their customer base from. A group of them roll into a zone and farm everything in sight for a short duration. Yes, they monopolize the zone for a bit, then roll out into another zone, giving the players a shot at playing the game. Yes, it is inconvenient for that short time they are in the zone, but as a player you know they will soon be gone, moving from zone to zone.
Many people think that the lone player gathering is a gold farmer, but generally no. The gold farmers are much better organized. I would expect gold farmers in POTBS to be deep into economic production, making product to sell at top doubloon, then turning those doubloons into real world currency. Players will pay the doubloons back to the gold farmer to get that 84 gun ship of the line. It is a circle, the gold farmer gets an income, the player gets the ship he wants to have fun with.
Gold farmers are in business because they provide a service that players are willing to pay real world cash for. The only way to permanently ban gold farmers from the game is to eliminate all the players.
It's like amending the US constitution to prohibit alcoholic drinks, it gives that nice, warm, fuzzy, feel good feeling, but is totally ineffective.
Pissing people off one customer at a time....... You are assuming that FLS would not care about their customer based on that they did not help you. Sorry but that is black/white thinking and is in any cases wrong. If they cared about their customer service they would have helped me. How is this black/white thinking? If they don't help resolve customer problems does this mply to you that they care about customer service.
I meant keeping an open mind and see how it pans out, ofcourse they can do a mistake. But it is to early to tell how much focus this is.
Your story could be used with any company, not only MMO's, out there.
Bingo, you just got one of my points.
I actually lost my point in my own arguments there, somewhere, all by myself. But I meant to argue the point to keep an open mind and see if they actually are focusing on wrong things. There can be references made to Sigil but I think it is to early to make. There is much more differences in the foundation(?) for that.
So, are you trying to say that it is okay for MMORPG companies to not be flexible in responding to customer service complaints cause everyone does it? It's acceptable to tell customers to 'goto Helen Waite" because that is the standard? It is acceptable to make that initial sale and not bother with service?
No I don't think that was what I intended to say, but maybe I said it as a figure of speech.
But with the durabilty poiny it can be discussed.
"-Ok, there is problems now with stressed servers so give it back for this time period.
-If we do that, can we fall in a trap as it can be abused?"
IMO I'm 50/50 on that, refit durability(for an initial period of time) or keep a straight line with rejecting it.
My point is that I really do like this game, it is rough around the edges like any MMORPG is at launch. Vanguard was the same way, it was a diamond in the rough. Sigil went down the wrong path and almost destroyed Vanguard. Believe it or not, it really is a blessing that SOE stepped in and is trying to revive it.
I just hate to see Flying Labs go down the same path as Sigil and NOT provide resolution to customer issues. They will lose the goodwill of their customers if they do so. Everyone that played Vanguard recognized that it needed work at launch. Many said that the game would be in better shape in 6 months. Well, Sigil ignored customer service, and went the cheap and easy PR route of issuing press releases saying the were banning gold farmers (a temporary, one hour effect at best) and discussing their staff working on the next expansion. Sigil didn't even last 6 months using this approach.
I very sincerely hope and pray that Flying Labs takes a second look at their back end customer service department and institutes some policies designed to attract and retain customers. They are up against stiff competition this year, AOC, WAR, and The Agency, not counting a WOW expansion. Consider the fact that 50% of the US population makes less than $45,000/yr, are headed for a recession, inflation, and people aren't in the gambling mood to take a chance staying with a game run by a company with a poor customer service record. It's a tough market out there, Flying Labs may have a good game idea, and good programmers, but they damn better well also concentrate on a good business model. And that means pay attention to the back end of the business (service) as much as the front end (sales).
Why don't these MMO companies step up and pull a "Vegas Blacklist" meneuver?
Guys who cheat and violate terms of use have their IPs banned, simple as that. Now no matter how many copies of the game they buy, they can't log in to play from that gateway and it's their own fault.
This blacklist should be shared with all other companies for greater effect.
Works just like banning people from Vegas casinos for cheating.
Originally posted by zaxxon23 All very fine arguments. However, they forget one very basic principle. Without the time and effort of the "farmer", the item or coin in question would not exist on the server. This most basic of principles will require judges to determine whether or not the EULA is legally enforceable. The company claims to own all digital rights to items and coin, yet these items do not appear on servers without the work of the players. This brings legitimate question into the ownership rights of digital items. Not to be rude, but your "facts" are by no means set in stone. Judges are smart people for the most part, and they also don't have the anti-RMT bias that so many of the posters do in this forum. When this issue finally arrives in a courtroom of significance (no cases as of yet gives any true precedence to judge other cases), I can assure you that judges will take far more into account then a catch-all EULA. Specifically, judges will wonder just how a developer thinks they have ownership rights of digital items that don't even exist if it were not for the time and effort of the players. Don't fool yourselves, anti-RMTers. This issue is far from settled in a legal sense. As an aside, if the gold farmers "win", your argument that MMOs will fail is just plain closed minded and short sighted. I'll use the example of the Station Exchange, which has had millions of dollars in transactions. EQ2 is far from dead, and from what I understand their most popular servers are the RMT servers. It is obvious that you have a closed minded bias on RMT. You simply can't make the paradigm shift as to what would be if RMT was supported. You're going to have to try and wrap your mind around this in order to get a truly complete and informed view of the situation. You have to understand that supporting RMT CREATES JOBS! Not just Asian jobs either. There's plenty of people who want to pay for stuff, and there's plenty of people of all kinds of nationalities who'd like to make some spare cash selling stuff. Supporting RMT is a direct boost to the overall world economy, and we've already seen instances where RMT in video games can provide people with real decent income jobs. Just take second life and project entropia as further examples. The problem with those games, though, is that they're not "games". They are just virtual worlds. When "games" finally get to virtual world status, and provide compelling fun content, that's when RMT is really going to take off and create its own niche sector of the economy. Indeed, the age of RMT is just beginning. I hope you're prepared to deal with it.
Actually, this issue is long since firmly settled, at least in US courts. The game owners own the items in the game. Period. Players have no more ownership of their character's possessions than I would be able to claim ownership of your PlayDough if I made something out of it while borrowing it.
Much of what else you say has merit, but the legal ownership issue is not an issue anymore. There was a bit of a scare there for a while - for instance, if players own their EQ items, and EQ closes down for good, would SOE have to pay the players the retail value for all their items? It made online game execs a bit nervous for a brief period. But no, this has all been hashed out already. The player has no legal rights to 'their' stuff at all. Technically, selling them is probably fraud.
That said, I absolutely agree that gold farmers won't cause the shutdown of MMOs. They might cause some serious design changes... Eve's economy, for instance, is very resilient against farming. Roma Victor's economy (if it were big enough to have farmers) is completely IMPERVIOUS to farming. Basically, the traditional design we see in most games is flawed when approached by RMT farmers. New approaches are needed to deal with this problem, and developers ARE coming up with them. The huge move to "bind on equip" items in many games is a direct result of RMT selling issues, and a powerful weapon against it.
If games do begin to move again toward being true virtual worlds, I think we will see a decline of RMT sales. Virtual worlds tend toward more robust economies, but also more balanced ones. Often, less item centric in nature, or without means to quickly and easily acquire heaps of loot to resell. When wolves stop dropping gold peices, gold farming becomes much more difficult... While I don't think that RMT is going to go away, I think it will lose much of the current strength it has in future game designs, either because the designs have been crafted to eliminate it, or because the companies have internalized the RMT into the design like Roma Victor.
Why don't these MMO companies step up and pull a "Vegas Blacklist" meneuver? Guys who cheat and violate terms of use have their IPs banned, simple as that. Now no matter how many copies of the game they buy, they can't log in to play from that gateway and it's their own fault. This blacklist should be shared with all other companies for greater effect. Works just like banning people from Vegas casinos for cheating.
Becouse gold farmers still pay for there accounts. Where cheaters in casinos cost the casino money. I fear that the amount of gold farmers account is so big that it is an hard decision for a company to decided to ban them all or just let them do there thing.
Originally posted by Plasuma!!! Why don't these MMO companies step up and pull a "Vegas Blacklist" meneuver? Guys who cheat and violate terms of use have their IPs banned, simple as that. Now no matter how many copies of the game they buy, they can't log in to play from that gateway and it's their own fault. This blacklist should be shared with all other companies for greater effect. Works just like banning people from Vegas casinos for cheating.
That would work nicely for a few selected companies who work with static IP addresses. What would that mean? Gold farmers/sellers will switch to dynamic IP addresses, players who cheat are likely to be on a customer connection with dynamic IP addresses already anyaway.
The possible effects include, but are not limited to: - piling up a HUGE list of IP addresses that probably won't contribute to banning those players, since all they have to do is to reconnect to their ISP to get a different IP address - preventing "good" customers from playing since they hit one of those banned IP addresses - In the case of blocking a whole IP range: see above, with little effect to gold farmers/sellers, just add a bunch of customers that leave because they don't want to change their ISP or are sick and fed up of reconnecting their network to get a new address
The problem is always how to distinguish between "wanted" and "unwanted" customers - and it's just too easy to get a new "face" on the internet.
Why don't these MMO companies step up and pull a "Vegas Blacklist" meneuver? Guys who cheat and violate terms of use have their IPs banned, simple as that. Now no matter how many copies of the game they buy, they can't log in to play from that gateway and it's their own fault. This blacklist should be shared with all other companies for greater effect. Works just like banning people from Vegas casinos for cheating.
Well, besides the fact that I don't believe changing your IP or masking it is particularly difficult, banning your customer base is something most companies are loath to do. Gold Buyers probably make up 35-50% of the total player base. Takes a lot of guts to ban that much business, and few companies show that sort of resolve.
Sharing such information with other companies would open them up to lawsuits where they would have to prove their case, which would cost them more money than its worth.
Vegas takes such efforts because there are large amounts of "real" money involved. Virtual currency doesn't carry the same amount of weight.
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
You don't have to ban everyone to get the job done. Start out with 3 day bans for buying currency or even the Eve idea (which I love). Escalate each instance to the point of some permanent bans and make them very public. All a company really needs to do is put the fear of getting caught into the subscribers to make some headway. As long as people can run around buying currency with no recourse and it is more profitable for gold sellers to continue sales even when getting banned, nothing will change.
I'm sure it is much harder to do than I am making it out to be though.
One thing not discussed here is whether or not gold selling is even going to be much of a problem. I certainly haven't had any reason to need extra cash with any of the characters I've played. I'm not sure how the high levels are with cash, but unless you are losing boats right and left, why would you buy cash?
One thing not discussed here is whether or not gold selling is even going to be much of a problem. I certainly haven't had any reason to need extra cash with any of the characters I've played. I'm not sure how the high levels are with cash, but unless you are losing boats right and left, why would you buy cash?
Good players don't buy cash. Good players don't need to pay power leveling services either......
One thing I want to comment on is the appraoch Sigil/Vanguard used (the wrong approach):
There was no in game mechanism for a guild bank in Vanguard, so guild leaders designated a banker, and he held all the guild cash in his personal in game bank account. Sigil came along and looked at these bank balances, and determined that these player accounts were exploiters/gold sellers, and banned the accounts. Guilds lost all their accumulated cash, pissing off not only the banned player, but all the members of the guild. Sigil customer service was inflexible, and would not reverse any bans. Sigil/Vanguard didn't even last three months.
So tell me, does POTBS have Society bank accounts? If not, should FLS just arbitrarily start banning players that they think have accumulated to many doubloons to quickly?
Comments
No, I didn't. Your point was that Gold Farming is "cheating".
My point is "Why?"
What is the issue with it? Why is it against the rules? Just because the games company says so?
How does it hurt the game? Or other players?
The only convincing arguement I see against it (even from Developers) is that Gold Farmers "chat spam".
All the other issues are to do with game design.
Look, I play a lot of games. Not all the games I play are "balanced" - and that's OK - so long as you know the rules before you start. Some games are actually MORE interesting and challenging because of this.
Would I play Chess with someone who switches pieces?
YES actually. I play both Knightmare and Proteus Chess http://www.sjgames.com/ourgames/chess.html
So, it comes down to design, or rather bad design by the Developers.
So the "rules" are a Stop-Gap measure to cover the flaws in that design?
Okay, fair enough. But the long term solution then would be to deal with those flaws - not continue to waste resources repeatedly hunting down and banning "players" who don't care anyway?
Nothing says irony like spelling ideot wrong.
Reasons:
I have listed a few reason that show currency sellers have a negative impact on the entire playerbase universally so that a few people can get a leg up or skip doing something they don't want to.
Can you name the benefits that currency sellers offer the playerbase as a whole?
Keep in mind all the negatives too....
Daffido11, your posts lists a lot of negative things in MMOs - are all these things attributed to Gold Farmers exclusively?
Are you seriously saying ALL Gold Farmers hack and steal accounts?
That's a bit like saying ALL PvPers are gankers?
Or how about ALL players who play Pirates are immature teenage griefers?
As an example the issue of Chat Spam comes up as an arguement against Gold Farmers. Yet I have seen societies recruiting in chat too. I find this chat spam just as annoying - yet is that OK if they are not Gold Farmers?
You mention 24 hour macros?
That may be true in other MMOs but in PotBS - it was FLS who designed in the 24 hour macro - by having labour accumulate in real time?
The economy 'dupe' as you call it is a game exploit and I have addressed this in post above. Sure - maybe not honest - but as much the "fault" of the developer if you want to point fingers?
It goes against the intent of the game? Oh really? How do you know? How do you know that the developer didn't put it in there specifically to allow players to make / recover a lot of money quickly? (There might be a valid design reason for this). The fact that a few players then 'exploit' this to the extreme is something the designer must account for.
Stolen Credit Cards? This is a criminal matter. The Developers need not deal with this. Let the charge go through (don't ban them) and the problem will land in the lap of the Credit card Company and the local law enforcement.
Are you seriously saying that ALL Gold Farmers use stolen Credit Cards? And they ALL get chargebacks?
Taking up a slot on the server. OK - how is that different to a merchant player who goes AFK all the time taking up a slot? So long as the game comapany gets payed???
Then you mention spam... (fair point - so target the spammers)
Then you mention a host of negative in game behaviours I have seen from any number of players - not just "Gold Farmers".
Positive things about Gold Farmers?
Well, I don't use them myself, because for me it's about personal achievement - but they do allow a new player to get a head start quickly and for very little effort (just some cash)
- Now as I say, that's not my thing - but many players want to do this because they hate grind etc. My personal view is that if you are THAT impatient you should avoid MMOs... but that's just my opinion.
It also provides a way for players to "sell out" of a subscription they no longer want.
- So, if I sub up for 12 months and 2 months later decide I don't like the game - I can sell my stuff and get something back on my sub (assuming the company does not allow refunds)
So long as they don't use exploits, hacks etc they are the ultimate crafters.
If you don't use them - it doesn't really effect you though does it?
So what if little Johnny uses Mommy's CC to purchase 1000000 dubloon to buy a 1st rate ship of the line and a level 50 character?
He has no idea how to use it and will get pwned.
If that's the way he likes to play - I pity him and his family.
But I can still have fun regardless.
Nothing says irony like spelling ideot wrong.
I don't wanna piss on your parade , but you cannot scare gold sellers , its chinese farmers doing a job they get paid to do , if you ban a account they just create a new one and continue from there.
List of SOE lies
Actually, most games do have an economy pre built into them, and its true, gold farming can upset it. Most games have money "drains" built into them to take cash out of the economy. In DAOC it was the housing system, where a major house could cost 10 plat a week to maintain. In WOW its the mount system, where players spend a fortune that vanishes into thin air.
The problem is farmers rarely spend money on such drains, they throw it all back into the economy, so their effect is more profound than a normal player and it is harder for the developers to adjust the drains to account for their impact w/o hurting the legitimate player.
I'm not against gold buying though, I think the effects are manageable, and they actually impart some benefits like selling rare item drops at a great frequency than a player would, since again, they rarely use them. They also provide a lot of raw materials for sale in the economy that might never get there if left up to players to farm, since that tends to be more boring.
"True friends stab you in the front." | Oscar Wilde
"I need to finish" - Christian Wolff: The Accountant
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
I'm not sure gold farmers sit and hack accounts. Why hack the account when you get money from that person? Thats just stupid.
But we have group of people that make fake mails and sometimes people don't see it's fake until it's too late.
That happens a lot with Bank accounts. You can read about it in the News or watch it on TV, still everytime there is a new fake Bank mail asking for login and password 200,000 people fall for it...
Played:
From Earth & Beyond, Anarchy Online, Matrix Online, Star Wars Galaxies, World of Warcraft, Age of Conan, Tabula Rasa (Beta), EvE Online, City of Villians, Atlantica Online, Guild Wars, Lineage 2, Pirates of the Burning Sea, PlanetSide, RF Online, Second Life, Fallen Earth.
The game has not even been out a week.
Exactly...
Serrvers are unstable, there are bugs to quash, and customer service is performing poorly.
Have you asked those that have used customer service and recieved it well or are you only looking at those that have issues with it and judge it by that. For your Apple example, do you think they only have positive reviews about their customer service.
You miss the point. The point is not about what company reviews are, the point is about what a company is willing to do on the back end to service customers. Any business that concentrates on the front end (sales) to the exclusion of the back end (customer service) will not be in business very long. Apple is at least taking a major step toward using their customer service to attract new business by word of mouth, and to retain existing customers. That is not the business model being used by a great many MMORPG companies, to include Flying Labs. Your arguement seems to be that the status quo is acceptable customer service?
Banning gold farmers, and allocating customer service assets to take immediate action, as opposed to assisting subscribers, is the same direction Sigil went.
They are assisting subscribers, ofcourse they why wouldn't they.
Banning gold farmers is an exercise in futility and does not assist subscribers. Look at the game mechanics. When a player loses that 84 gun ship of the line do you seriously think they are going to go back to their default cutter and start ratting and questing to get the doubloons to replace it? Of course their not. Some will get another from their society, and some will get the doubloons to replace it from a gold farmer. Some may do both. That is just part of the game design, and banning non-paying gold farmers over and over and over and over again will not correct the situation.
I noted the customer service response time by a poster that reported gold seller spamming, as opposed to my customer service report response time, and can see the priority.
I have had response time withing the hour and got that issue fixed withing the hour. The reason that the gold spam was responded to can be that it is easier, and faster, to fix.
But it's not fixed, that gold farmer was probably up and running on another account within the hour.
But still even though your issue had longer response time does not equal that they don't care. Your issue could be something that they have to think and discuss about first.
You missed my point, their reply WAS that they were not going to do anything about their server losing connectivity and my ship being sunk.
Priorities, my friend. Gold sellers are not paying subscribers, Flying Labs, in their own admission, does not collect dollar one off of them. Basically, they acknowledge they have server connectibility problems, but will do nothing to correct the problem it caused for the potential subsciber. They are unwilling to restore one durability point on a level 14 cutter (out of 4 durability points total), not a game imbalancing issue.
Which is not that strange, sorry for your loss, but if they would start to do that it could be abused in the end. In which case it is better to keep a straigth line from starters.
So what? Look, at launch they could have instructed customer service to replace any players ship that was sunk, period, either by fault of the game, or in a PvP battle. Each and every player can utilize this service, there is no "unfair advantage". Post launch they could instruct customer service to replace up to 3 or 4 durability points per account (and set up a database to track the accounts, Apple only replaces one Ipod per customer, the second one is the customer problem), for an unlimited time. So your level 84 gun ship of the line gets sunk, and they replace 1 durability point so you can rat higher level stuff to get the cash to replace it. So what, now the player doesn't need to run to the gold farmer, or can run out and get in another PvP battle again. That's called fun, customers play to have fun. They don't play to get flogged merilessly by a cat-o-nine tails.
They told me that was not a warrantee issue, but that they would give me a brand new $300 ipod anyway. THAT is customer service!
Awfully nice of them. So if I buy cheap broken Ipods on ebay I can go and get a new one, not likely.
There is something called "goodwill" but that is not used regurarly.
Apple's policy is to replace one ipod per customer, and their computer system tracks each ipod by seriel number. They can tell when it was bought, and where. If your ipod is stolen, they can tell you the IP address that is currently using it. If you think it is that easy to scam Apple, be my guest and buy those broken ipods on ebay and go for it. That is what makes customer goodwill possible in the computer driven information age.
That is good PR for Apple, and brings them the new customers at the expense of the competition..
SOE offered me 1½ months free subscription even though they didn't need to, is that the same as expecting them to do it to all, no.
That is called earning customer goodwill. I am so glad that you brought SOE into the arguement. They had this game called SWG that they absolutely destroyed customer goodwill with, destroyed word of mouth advertising, and created a debacle for themselves. But they learned from it, they listened to their customer base and took EQ 2 in a different direction, making it argueably one of the best MMORPGs in existance. The offer you received is part of establishing customer goodwill. Should you expect it, no. Should they expect your goodwill without it, no. Look at how they are trying to regain customer goodwill with Vanguard. Do they need to do that, no. Do you need to try Vanguard again, no. See the point, don't treat your customers like shit and they will stay with you.
Pissing people off one customer at a time.......
You are assuming that FLS would not care about their customer based on that they did not help you. Sorry but that is black/white thinking and is in any cases wrong.
If they cared about their customer service they would have helped me. How is this black/white thinking? If they don't help resolve customer problems does this mply to you that they care about customer service.Your story could be used with any company, not only MMO's, out there.
Bingo, you just got one of my points. So, are you trying to say that it is okay for MMORPG companies to not be flexible in responding to customer service complaints cause everyone does it? It's acceptable to tell customers to 'goto Helen Waite" because that is the standard? It is acceptable to make that initial sale and not bother with service?
All very fine arguments. However, they forget one very basic principle. Without the time and effort of the "farmer", the item or coin in question would not exist on the server. This most basic of principles will require judges to determine whether or not the EULA is legally enforceable. The company claims to own all digital rights to items and coin, yet these items do not appear on servers without the work of the players. This brings legitimate question into the ownership rights of digital items.
Not to be rude, but your "facts" are by no means set in stone. Judges are smart people for the most part, and they also don't have the anti-RMT bias that so many of the posters do in this forum. When this issue finally arrives in a courtroom of significance (no cases as of yet gives any true precedence to judge other cases), I can assure you that judges will take far more into account then a catch-all EULA. Specifically, judges will wonder just how a developer thinks they have ownership rights of digital items that don't even exist if it were not for the time and effort of the players.
Don't fool yourselves, anti-RMTers. This issue is far from settled in a legal sense.
As an aside, if the gold farmers "win", your argument that MMOs will fail is just plain closed minded and short sighted. I'll use the example of the Station Exchange, which has had millions of dollars in transactions. EQ2 is far from dead, and from what I understand their most popular servers are the RMT servers.
It is obvious that you have a closed minded bias on RMT. You simply can't make the paradigm shift as to what would be if RMT was supported. You're going to have to try and wrap your mind around this in order to get a truly complete and informed view of the situation. You have to understand that supporting RMT CREATES JOBS! Not just Asian jobs either. There's plenty of people who want to pay for stuff, and there's plenty of people of all kinds of nationalities who'd like to make some spare cash selling stuff. Supporting RMT is a direct boost to the overall world economy, and we've already seen instances where RMT in video games can provide people with real decent income jobs. Just take second life and project entropia as further examples. The problem with those games, though, is that they're not "games". They are just virtual worlds. When "games" finally get to virtual world status, and provide compelling fun content, that's when RMT is really going to take off and create its own niche sector of the economy. Indeed, the age of RMT is just beginning. I hope you're prepared to deal with it.
I don't wanna piss on your parade , but you cannot scare gold sellers , its chinese farmers doing a job they get paid to do , if you ban a account they just create a new one and continue from there.
I never said you could scare the sellers. I said scare the buyers. I also stated that a 24 hour ban would not be enough. But if buyers start getting banned outright (permenant), then the risk may outweigh the reward and the sellers would have less customers.
Obviously this isn't going to stop sellers and buyers, but any move against it is a positive move imo.
Second, Of the positives you list
A) someone hates "the grind". No reason other people should suffer negatives of gold farming because one person doesn't want to play the same game. I also agree, they should find another game. Being lazy isn't a valid excuse.
C) new player head start. What is wrong with just playing the game? No one needs a head start, especially if it causes so many problems to the game.
The effects l listed in my other post do affect my, your and everyone elses gameplay, regardless of if we buy currency or not. That is the problem and why I posted it. Why should little johnny be able to pay someone to play the game for him and everyone else be affected by it in a negative manner. People being lazy are not "positives" of currency farmers.
Your story could be used with any company, not only MMO's, out there.
Bingo, you just got one of my points.
I actually lost my point in my own arguments there, somewhere, all by myself. But I meant to argue the point to keep an open mind and see if they actually are focusing on wrong things. There can be references made to Sigil but I think it is to early to make. There is much more differences in the foundation(?) for that.
So, are you trying to say that it is okay for MMORPG companies to not be flexible in responding to customer service complaints cause everyone does it? It's acceptable to tell customers to 'goto Helen Waite" because that is the standard? It is acceptable to make that initial sale and not bother with service?
No I don't think that was what I intended to say, but maybe I said it as a figure of speech.
But with the durabilty poiny it can be discussed.
"-Ok, there is problems now with stressed servers so give it back for this time period.
-If we do that, can we fall in a trap as it can be abused?"
IMO I'm 50/50 on that, refit durability(for an initial period of time) or keep a straight line with rejecting it.
I'm so broke. I can't even pay attention.
"You have the right not to be killed"
All very fine arguments. However, they forget one very basic principle. Without the time and effort of the "farmer", the item or coin in question would not exist on the server. This most basic of principles will require judges to determine whether or not the EULA is legally enforceable. The company claims to own all digital rights to items and coin, yet these items do not appear on servers without the work of the players. This brings legitimate question into the ownership rights of digital items.
Not to be rude, but your "facts" are by no means set in stone. Judges are smart people for the most part, and they also don't have the anti-RMT bias that so many of the posters do in this forum. When this issue finally arrives in a courtroom of significance (no cases as of yet gives any true precedence to judge other cases), I can assure you that judges will take far more into account then a catch-all EULA. Specifically, judges will wonder just how a developer thinks they have ownership rights of digital items that don't even exist if it were not for the time and effort of the players.
Don't fool yourselves, anti-RMTers. This issue is far from settled in a legal sense.
As an aside, if the gold farmers "win", your argument that MMOs will fail is just plain closed minded and short sighted. I'll use the example of the Station Exchange, which has had millions of dollars in transactions. EQ2 is far from dead, and from what I understand their most popular servers are the RMT servers.
It is obvious that you have a closed minded bias on RMT. You simply can't make the paradigm shift as to what would be if RMT was supported. You're going to have to try and wrap your mind around this in order to get a truly complete and informed view of the situation. You have to understand that supporting RMT CREATES JOBS! Not just Asian jobs either. There's plenty of people who want to pay for stuff, and there's plenty of people of all kinds of nationalities who'd like to make some spare cash selling stuff. Supporting RMT is a direct boost to the overall world economy, and we've already seen instances where RMT in video games can provide people with real decent income jobs. Just take second life and project entropia as further examples. The problem with those games, though, is that they're not "games". They are just virtual worlds. When "games" finally get to virtual world status, and provide compelling fun content, that's when RMT is really going to take off and create its own niche sector of the economy. Indeed, the age of RMT is just beginning. I hope you're prepared to deal with it.
I know you weren't responding to me but I would be totally in favor of RMT specific servers for every game out there, I would simply stick to non-RMT servers just like I do in EQ2. I'm happy, they are happy, it's all good. That is probably the best course of action for these companies... it almost (not quite) eliminated the RMT spam from the regular servers in EQ2. It's a win/win
Many people think that the lone player gathering is a gold farmer, but generally no. The gold farmers are much better organized. I would expect gold farmers in POTBS to be deep into economic production, making product to sell at top doubloon, then turning those doubloons into real world currency. Players will pay the doubloons back to the gold farmer to get that 84 gun ship of the line. It is a circle, the gold farmer gets an income, the player gets the ship he wants to have fun with.
Gold farmers are in business because they provide a service that players are willing to pay real world cash for. The only way to permanently ban gold farmers from the game is to eliminate all the players.
It's like amending the US constitution to prohibit alcoholic drinks, it gives that nice, warm, fuzzy, feel good feeling, but is totally ineffective.
Your story could be used with any company, not only MMO's, out there.
Bingo, you just got one of my points.
I actually lost my point in my own arguments there, somewhere, all by myself. But I meant to argue the point to keep an open mind and see if they actually are focusing on wrong things. There can be references made to Sigil but I think it is to early to make. There is much more differences in the foundation(?) for that.
So, are you trying to say that it is okay for MMORPG companies to not be flexible in responding to customer service complaints cause everyone does it? It's acceptable to tell customers to 'goto Helen Waite" because that is the standard? It is acceptable to make that initial sale and not bother with service?
No I don't think that was what I intended to say, but maybe I said it as a figure of speech.
But with the durabilty poiny it can be discussed.
"-Ok, there is problems now with stressed servers so give it back for this time period.
-If we do that, can we fall in a trap as it can be abused?"
IMO I'm 50/50 on that, refit durability(for an initial period of time) or keep a straight line with rejecting it.
My point is that I really do like this game, it is rough around the edges like any MMORPG is at launch. Vanguard was the same way, it was a diamond in the rough. Sigil went down the wrong path and almost destroyed Vanguard. Believe it or not, it really is a blessing that SOE stepped in and is trying to revive it.
I just hate to see Flying Labs go down the same path as Sigil and NOT provide resolution to customer issues. They will lose the goodwill of their customers if they do so. Everyone that played Vanguard recognized that it needed work at launch. Many said that the game would be in better shape in 6 months. Well, Sigil ignored customer service, and went the cheap and easy PR route of issuing press releases saying the were banning gold farmers (a temporary, one hour effect at best) and discussing their staff working on the next expansion. Sigil didn't even last 6 months using this approach.
I very sincerely hope and pray that Flying Labs takes a second look at their back end customer service department and institutes some policies designed to attract and retain customers. They are up against stiff competition this year, AOC, WAR, and The Agency, not counting a WOW expansion. Consider the fact that 50% of the US population makes less than $45,000/yr, are headed for a recession, inflation, and people aren't in the gambling mood to take a chance staying with a game run by a company with a poor customer service record. It's a tough market out there, Flying Labs may have a good game idea, and good programmers, but they damn better well also concentrate on a good business model. And that means pay attention to the back end of the business (service) as much as the front end (sales).
Why don't these MMO companies step up and pull a "Vegas Blacklist" meneuver?
Guys who cheat and violate terms of use have their IPs banned, simple as that. Now no matter how many copies of the game they buy, they can't log in to play from that gateway and it's their own fault.
This blacklist should be shared with all other companies for greater effect.
Works just like banning people from Vegas casinos for cheating.
Much of what else you say has merit, but the legal ownership issue is not an issue anymore. There was a bit of a scare there for a while - for instance, if players own their EQ items, and EQ closes down for good, would SOE have to pay the players the retail value for all their items? It made online game execs a bit nervous for a brief period. But no, this has all been hashed out already. The player has no legal rights to 'their' stuff at all. Technically, selling them is probably fraud.
That said, I absolutely agree that gold farmers won't cause the shutdown of MMOs. They might cause some serious design changes... Eve's economy, for instance, is very resilient against farming. Roma Victor's economy (if it were big enough to have farmers) is completely IMPERVIOUS to farming. Basically, the traditional design we see in most games is flawed when approached by RMT farmers. New approaches are needed to deal with this problem, and developers ARE coming up with them. The huge move to "bind on equip" items in many games is a direct result of RMT selling issues, and a powerful weapon against it.
If games do begin to move again toward being true virtual worlds, I think we will see a decline of RMT sales. Virtual worlds tend toward more robust economies, but also more balanced ones. Often, less item centric in nature, or without means to quickly and easily acquire heaps of loot to resell. When wolves stop dropping gold peices, gold farming becomes much more difficult...
While I don't think that RMT is going to go away, I think it will lose much of the current strength it has in future game designs, either because the designs have been crafted to eliminate it, or because the companies have internalized the RMT into the design like Roma Victor.
Owyn
Commander, Defenders of Order
http://www.defendersoforder.com
Becouse gold farmers still pay for there accounts. Where cheaters in casinos cost the casino money. I fear that the amount of gold farmers account is so big that it is an hard decision for a company to decided to ban them all or just let them do there thing.
That would work nicely for a few selected companies who work with static IP addresses. What would that mean? Gold farmers/sellers will switch to dynamic IP addresses, players who cheat are likely to be on a customer connection with dynamic IP addresses already anyaway.
The possible effects include, but are not limited to:
- piling up a HUGE list of IP addresses that probably won't contribute to banning those players, since all they have to do is to reconnect to their ISP to get a different IP address
- preventing "good" customers from playing since they hit one of those banned IP addresses
- In the case of blocking a whole IP range: see above, with little effect to gold farmers/sellers, just add a bunch of customers that leave because they don't want to change their ISP or are sick and fed up of reconnecting their network to get a new address
The problem is always how to distinguish between "wanted" and "unwanted" customers - and it's just too easy to get a new "face" on the internet.
Do what Eve does.
If you're caught buying ISK, they turn your bank balance into a negative of what you purchased.
You buy 50million gold? Your bank balance is negative 50 million.
Also these companies need to be more aggressive in disputing the chargebacks. It can be done, but you need to hire some competent people to do it.
Well, besides the fact that I don't believe changing your IP or masking it is particularly difficult, banning your customer base is something most companies are loath to do. Gold Buyers probably make up 35-50% of the total player base. Takes a lot of guts to ban that much business, and few companies show that sort of resolve.
Sharing such information with other companies would open them up to lawsuits where they would have to prove their case, which would cost them more money than its worth.
Vegas takes such efforts because there are large amounts of "real" money involved. Virtual currency doesn't carry the same amount of weight.
"True friends stab you in the front." | Oscar Wilde
"I need to finish" - Christian Wolff: The Accountant
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
You don't have to ban everyone to get the job done. Start out with 3 day bans for buying currency or even the Eve idea (which I love). Escalate each instance to the point of some permanent bans and make them very public. All a company really needs to do is put the fear of getting caught into the subscribers to make some headway. As long as people can run around buying currency with no recourse and it is more profitable for gold sellers to continue sales even when getting banned, nothing will change.
I'm sure it is much harder to do than I am making it out to be though.
One thing not discussed here is whether or not gold selling is even going to be much of a problem. I certainly haven't had any reason to need extra cash with any of the characters I've played. I'm not sure how the high levels are with cash, but unless you are losing boats right and left, why would you buy cash?
Good players don't buy cash. Good players don't need to pay power leveling services either......
One thing I want to comment on is the appraoch Sigil/Vanguard used (the wrong approach):
There was no in game mechanism for a guild bank in Vanguard, so guild leaders designated a banker, and he held all the guild cash in his personal in game bank account. Sigil came along and looked at these bank balances, and determined that these player accounts were exploiters/gold sellers, and banned the accounts. Guilds lost all their accumulated cash, pissing off not only the banned player, but all the members of the guild. Sigil customer service was inflexible, and would not reverse any bans. Sigil/Vanguard didn't even last three months.
So tell me, does POTBS have Society bank accounts? If not, should FLS just arbitrarily start banning players that they think have accumulated to many doubloons to quickly?