That sounds like a deliciously evil plot. If they sold gold then I am fairly certain it would be the best get rich quick scheme ever. If they did sell gold not only could they get your subscription money they would get your gold farming money and then would make sure you never got to use your subscription by banning you. It'd be the perfect setup so long as nobody found out.
That is not selling gold. They sell virtual versions of time cards that can be sold in-game to other players, the other players are the ones paying you gold (ISK) for it. Back on topic, if developers sold gold themselves, you would see quite an interest from them in creating new gold sinks, so no thank you, not to mention it would NOT kill these third-party "companies", they would simply undercut it. Like these F2P games show quite an interest in developing new and better item mall stuff. I want my relation with the developer to be as simple as possible, I pay them the monthly fee, and they develop stuff for the game, this way no one exploits each other (at least on the money aspect). And it wouldn't stop people from hacking accounts either, it's partially the developer's fault we get hacked.
Dunno if you played jade dynasty a f2p by perfect world in that game you have an ingame bot incorporated with your characters that by lvl 90 would start to give it true meaning of profit by the company but that's another story.
In that game bots were useless since the ingame bot was there and free and to get money the best way was to do the events run every week but farming mobs would net some too plus you could buy item mall stuff with ingame gold so people could buy item mall items to get more ingame gold.
I never saw or read people complain about bots till I played.
So even in some f2p doing some methods could lower the bots and gold sellers because they understand it would be a waste of time.
Gold sellers could lower the costs to sell ingame gold but till what point? that's what I mean if gold sellers sell 1 million gold for 10 $ and you could buy it from the company for 5 $ plus more secure they would realize it's not worth it much and could potentially leave.
Like I said in my OP I added in the poll that it's dev's fault because I knew people would choose it but it's not entirely their fault how can they secure the internet when it's not theirs? there should be more security mesurements regarding that too to prevent all these hackers but I never hear anything being done.
Yes devs need to protect their games but not every company has millions of cutomers playing their games and can afford to make a large company with many people securing the game and banning bots.
The MMO’s I have played have only had temporary problems with gold sellers, never lasting more than a month.
But with the rampant commercialism ushered in by item shops, they won’t need to protect the game against gold sellers. The MMO becomes the gold seller. If you can get everything you might want in a cash shop, why pay for gold? This is the new strategy being adopted, MMO’s don’t want you spending cash elsewhere, spend it with them. The huge distortion this makes of the game, its crafting system, economy and PvP are simply ignored.
Kerching! Kerching! – cash shops allow MMO’s to coin their own gold and sell it too you. Keep your wallet near your PC to save yourself the trouble of having to go and fetch it.
Honestly, I'd rather deal with the occasional /tell from GoldDuder9000 than have a P2P game suddenly become pay to win. Besides, it doesn't stop them from selling "power leveling services" or trying to undercut the dev prices. Hell, you can still get gold spam in some F2P games. So yeah, I'm generally against that.
Let's not change the topic into cash shops the question is if devs would start to sell ingame gold themselves to lower gold spammers and hacked accounts.
I won't play a game that is p2p and has cash shops with stuff that should be ingame even if they are costumes and don't give any stats.
The only exeption and depending if not abbused is for extra rare items like for example baby pets of bosses they should be rare so sold in a cash shop is not a problem for me till they don't give extra stats.
"Developers can't stop gold sellers, so they should sell gold themselves."
This is the same as saying "Developers can't stop bugs, so they should make every bug a feature", or "Developers can't stop cheaters, so they should give every player wall hacks and aimbots". At best this is a defeatist attitude whereby a bad game mechanic is accepted and worked into the game rather than being removed, at worst it's an excuse by a company looking to cash-in.
CCP just allow people to trade game time. there is no gold being *created* by CCP, it's just traded between players. you buy game time from CCP and sell it to another player for ISK.
Yeah I know but, in reality, it occurs. You can buy from CCP an item that you can sell in game for in game currency. I dont think that fucks up EVE's economy.
No. You are Buying Game time from CCP and selling the gametime to someone Else in Exchange for their hard Work getting the Isk in the first place.
I like the system. Its cleaner than just Spawning gold into the system, It gives people the chance to Play the game for Free if they are willing to work for it, And it lets me Safely Buy isk from another player.
AND most inportant of all for a game like Eve, It Dosent Fudge up the Player Driven Econamy. Now in games like Wow or STO, a Cash shop would only Leed to inflation of the Items in game. It would only be anoying to players. If CCP were just Makeing 500Million Isk for 15 Bucks then the Econamy of Eve would be in Shambels.
Plex is just a Easy way to transfer Isk. Not to Generate it. And unlike Other games, Eve has real Item loss and Money loss.
If ye love wealth greater than liberty, the tranquility of servitude; greater than the animating contest for freedom, go home from us in peace. We seek not your counsel, nor your arms. Crouch down and lick the hand that feeds you; May your chains set lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen. Samuel Adams
"Developers can't stop gold sellers, so they should sell gold themselves." This is the same as saying "Developers can't stop bugs, so they should make every bug a feature", or "Developers can't stop cheaters, so they should give every player wall hacks and aimbots". At best this is a defeatist attitude whereby a bad game mechanic is accepted and worked into the game rather than being removed, at worst it's an excuse by a company looking to cash-in.
From were did you get that? I didn't say that.
Developers are having a hard time fighting them since the recent bombardment on accounts hacked so more measurments need to be implemented and not only from the devs but they also need to make the internet more secure.
Lazy people keep on business the botters so why instead of buying it from unkown people and risking on getting hacked they bought it from the game itself? that could potentionally bankrupt the botters if it succeeds and the devs don't become greedy.
Like I said in my OP if this method is implemented the game needs to change too meaning new ideas so that gold is not the only currency in the fantasy world like in x zone you need to collect caps (non tradeable) to buy stuff from these vendors and gold means nothing here.
Stuff like this could potentionally lower the gold spammers/botters not all of course but there need to be more protection while playing a game because these botters can ruin people's experience and leave the game.
This wouldn't deter gold sellers at all -- they would just undercut the price and make it cheaper to buy from them than the game company, IMO.
Personally, I don't think there is a solution to this. As long as there are players willing to BUY gold, there will be gold sellers. The key would be to get rid of the demand, but I don't see that happening.
The gaps in logic from the above quote are ridiculous.
You really think a gold farmer has any chance at making a profit when the company can simply make gold? You believe that gold selling companies can undercut the company which can make as much gold as they want whenever they want? Only way that could happen is if the game company set a ridiculous price per gold that was static leaving an opportunity for gold sellers to even have a market share.
Simply put if a game company made the price of gold dynamic then these gold selling businesses wouldn't be economically viable at all. An easy solution is have the price of gold decrease as the amount of currency available to the market increases. So gold prices are high on brand new servers but are much less on established servers. You cannot beat the company that can automate the creation and delivery of gold at any price they want.
Honestly all companies should sell gold because there will always be a demand for it. Why let some other business endanger the account safety of your players in addition to making money off of your creation? Its all about implementation. Don't make it necessary just a convenience.
To put it plain and simple... A game is meant to be played for fun. Any soft of outside interfearence (botitng, goldselling and unbalanced cashshops) would ruin the gameplay for me.
If a dev is supporting goldselling in their own cashshop, then the player who spends the most money will have the biggest advantage. And don't tell me this is not true. As a former Lineage II private-server player, I've seen it happen. Players actually spending $1.000s would get the best gear in the game and they were virtually gods themselves. I would not want to see that happen in P2P/F2P games.
I know in regular games the items won't be as overpowered as the ones handed out on the private servers, but still. Having the ability to spend real money for in-game currency, and thus buy yourself an advantage over an other because you can buy the best gear around, would make things unbalanced.
With that, there's the in-game economic problem. Allowing players to buy gold from the dev, the market would go haywire. In-game currency is worth dick sice you can buy as much as you want. So where a normal level 10 item would cost <x> in AH, with a dev-supported goldshop the game would cost you <10x>. Meaning the regular non-gold buying player would not be able to participate in the game efficiently anymore.
That's why I said and keep on saying if this method is implemented the game also needs to change so that money is not the only currency used everywere.
That's why I said and keep on saying if this method is implemented the game also needs to change so that money is not the only currency used everywere.
As long as our real-world economy is currency based, games will be like this as well. Changing the way players wlll gain items/advantages in game from currency to (lets say) crafting, won't matter for your poll. If a game is crafting based, then money is not worth anything, and thus won't the devs sell the money in-game anyway...
CCP just allow people to trade game time. there is no gold being *created* by CCP, it's just traded between players. you buy game time from CCP and sell it to another player for ISK.
Yeah I know but, in reality, it occurs. You can buy from CCP an item that you can sell in game for in game currency. I dont think that fucks up EVE's economy.
True, and the PLEX systems is a very good one IMO. but there is a qualitative difference between what CCP do and them selling ISK. CCP sell game time: end of story as far as they're concerned. This means that they have no special incentive to meddle with the economy or game balance, unlike companies with cash shops.
To me cash shops are as bad as having gold sellers, so if a developer decided to use this method to 'combat' gold sellers I would avoid such a game, or walk away from it were I already playing.
The real culprit of the issue is the people who buy gold. If developers really want to deal with the problem of bots, gold sellers, and breached accounts, then they need to come down hard on the people who try to purchase ingame advantages not intended by the developers. Without demand, there is no reason for the sellers to be so aggressive. The players who really want to buy their way to the top, then they should play a game that is designed for that, i.e. an item shop game
The MMO player economy works just like any other economy, albeit a lot simpler. So if you increase the amount of gold that's circulating, inflation will happen. Meaning, now that there's 1000g in circulation, instead of 100g, what once cost 1g will now cost 10g. The developer isn't going to just grind for gold and then sell it; they're going to instead just program more gold into your pockets. Even gold sellers put in the effort to earn the gold, so even if they do accellerate the decline of the economy, it's still natural when compared to creating gold out of thin air.
Instead of condoning hyper-inflation, the developers need to do everything they can to preserve the ingame economy.
Now..., if there isn't a player economy, meaning players don't buy or sell things to each other, then the developers could sell gold, since all that'd be doing is allowing you to get what you could get at any time, just a bit earlier.
Simple answer, I don't know if it's been said already but:
If the games sold cash themselves, then it would ultimately destroy anything that would even resemble an Economy. Game economies, are just as important to balance as classes or levels, if not more so. Gold sellers sell gold just as Exxon sells gas. Supply & Demand. If Demand is over supply, prices go up. If supply is over Demand, prices go down. It's ever fluctuating, where as if the developers sold it they would get hammered if they sold it in the same way and be accused of price gouging. To sell it at one low rate would make the economy completely unpredictable and impossible to balance.
Extremely short answer:
None of the options fit. If developers sold gold, it would destroy their game and reputation.
Devs selling gold are one and the same problem to me as goldsellers , because they both increase inflation and the result is we (the players that play the game as intended) have to grind/harvest longer for the same item we want to buy on the auctionhouse.
To me goldbuying is the same as cheating. You cheat you get banned in games. They already ban goldsellers. Why not the buyers too? Name and shame them in worldchat at the same time they recieve the ban. I bet there will be a rapid decline in goldbuying.
Really? So in Eve you can buy Plex and sell it for ISK and that DOESN'T qualify as item mall behavior, but in a game like RoM, you can buy potions and sell them for gold and that DOES qualify as item mall behavior? Methinks there is a double standard here...
Other. Why? Because I would not support the MMO companies selling gold for a game in which THEY SET THE PRICES ON ITEMS THAT YOU NEED TO BUY. I have capitalised the preceding so that it can sink in. If the game company sells the gold, they will control the market. This means they COULD manipulate auction prices and force players to purchase their gold for inflated amounts that they decide upon. But why are we having the discussion in the first place. Gold obtained in any way other then through the resouces provided by the game are not ethical. The discussion should not be who to buy the gold from but why peopel should not buy gold outside of the game proper.
Developers selling gold is the only surefire way to prevent gold selling and deter 95% of all account theft. You purists think you stand on some moral high ground but you only put others and yourselves at threat by clinging to some antiquated values of fair play or whatever you want to call it. The account threat isn't interested in playing fair at all.
The primary difference between eve and other mmo's that sell stuff that can be resold, is that unlike a potion your selling 30 or 60 days of gameplay it's a win-win for people who need isk and people who need game time. A potion is a one use piece of junk item that will only last effect wise for maybe 8 hours(never really looked into these).
I'm a gaming purist that does not want any artifical, non-gamplay means of having gold or items available for purchase with real money. That about sums up my interest. Over the last 10 years, you'd think that if developers were really interested in substantially minimizing and making extremely tough, the means for a bot and gold sellers to exist, those developers would have. So this brings me to beg the question, do we really know that the developer or publishing team really isn't in on much of this gold-selling anyway?
I bet most mmo hosters probally run the gold selling sites themselves, Think of it. They ban so called gold buyers and sellers once in a blue moon but really. I don't see why they wouldn't sell currency for their own games. when alots of people buy it. Many people hate to farm money to buy 1 item. If they got a job they could just buy the gold for less time needed than if they actually farmed it. Take maple story for example. 50 mil is fairly cheap from those sellers, but I bet you in game it'd take a long time to earn that legit, at least at lower levels. People just don't got the time to spend hours farming money in a mmorpg when they could be doing more productive things in game.
Personally gold sellers and buyers don't bug me much. The market is there, the mmorpg devs are pretty much powerless to stop it. Might as well open up a site yourself and embrace it, offer lowest rates on the market for your game to put the other farm sites out of business <-- best way overall to stop it.
You do have some good suggestions though. However in alot of cases, people buying gold insted of farming it, keeps them in said game, people can only take so much farming before they get so bored they just quit. People blame high prices in games on the rmt indistry, but the rmt indistry doesn't set the prices, all the normal players do, and the longer a game is out the worse the economy usually gets. its not so bad in pay to play mmo's but in f2p mmo's the longer the games been out the more everything rises in costs.
F2P mmo hosters need to learn a lesson (Gpotato your one of them especally), When you can buy gold from a site to buy a cash shop item, for cheaper than it'd cost you in the cash shop, the hoster just loses money, in a way. Rappelz is a good show of this with how often CS items get traded around. DUngeon Fighter online is another example. buying 1 Avatar piece (Deco clothes that add stats) is about 2.50 USD, however most normal avatars sell in shops for 200-500k, up to 3-4 mil (3-4 mil is for atk or cast speed mostly). However you could buy 10mil gold for 5-6 bucks, and end up getting WAY more for your money.
"An MMORPG could be completely diffirent from WoW. Just look at games like Dofus, Wizard101 or EVE. But as it is, most of the Western MMOs are trying to succeed by out-WoWing WoW. It's like an army of 10 sports games made about same sports, and barely none about other sports. WoW clone is an accurate description of those games, it manages to convey much information with only two words." -Poster on mmorpg.com
Rift: World of Warcraft clone #9321 Nothing special to see here move along.
I am just going to throw this one out there. What is so bad about gold sellers? Other than spamming.
Aside from the fact that they are hacking/cracking other people's accounts in order to maintain a large inventory? Aside from the fact that RMT (Real Money Trading) is an illegal black market operation which goes against most game's TOS or Eulas?
Well, if you're okay with those two small issues, then consider the fact that these bastards destroy your video game's economy. They really, really truly and utterly destroy the economy. They jack up prices and monopolize all important in-game items so that the players are FORCED to buy gold from them.
Also, they are getting paid to play a video game for you.
You can't use the tools if you don't know they exist... http://www.ic3.gov - Internet Crime Complaint Center - Report cyber crimes to the FBI.
Comments
That sounds like a deliciously evil plot. If they sold gold then I am fairly certain it would be the best get rich quick scheme ever. If they did sell gold not only could they get your subscription money they would get your gold farming money and then would make sure you never got to use your subscription by banning you. It'd be the perfect setup so long as nobody found out.
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Dunno if you played jade dynasty a f2p by perfect world in that game you have an ingame bot incorporated with your characters that by lvl 90 would start to give it true meaning of profit by the company but that's another story.
In that game bots were useless since the ingame bot was there and free and to get money the best way was to do the events run every week but farming mobs would net some too plus you could buy item mall stuff with ingame gold so people could buy item mall items to get more ingame gold.
I never saw or read people complain about bots till I played.
So even in some f2p doing some methods could lower the bots and gold sellers because they understand it would be a waste of time.
Gold sellers could lower the costs to sell ingame gold but till what point? that's what I mean if gold sellers sell 1 million gold for 10 $ and you could buy it from the company for 5 $ plus more secure they would realize it's not worth it much and could potentially leave.
Like I said in my OP I added in the poll that it's dev's fault because I knew people would choose it but it's not entirely their fault how can they secure the internet when it's not theirs? there should be more security mesurements regarding that too to prevent all these hackers but I never hear anything being done.
Yes devs need to protect their games but not every company has millions of cutomers playing their games and can afford to make a large company with many people securing the game and banning bots.
The MMO’s I have played have only had temporary problems with gold sellers, never lasting more than a month.
But with the rampant commercialism ushered in by item shops, they won’t need to protect the game against gold sellers. The MMO becomes the gold seller. If you can get everything you might want in a cash shop, why pay for gold? This is the new strategy being adopted, MMO’s don’t want you spending cash elsewhere, spend it with them. The huge distortion this makes of the game, its crafting system, economy and PvP are simply ignored.
Kerching! Kerching! – cash shops allow MMO’s to coin their own gold and sell it too you. Keep your wallet near your PC to save yourself the trouble of having to go and fetch it.
Honestly, I'd rather deal with the occasional /tell from GoldDuder9000 than have a P2P game suddenly become pay to win. Besides, it doesn't stop them from selling "power leveling services" or trying to undercut the dev prices. Hell, you can still get gold spam in some F2P games. So yeah, I'm generally against that.
Bans a perma, but so are sigs in necro posts.
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Let's not change the topic into cash shops the question is if devs would start to sell ingame gold themselves to lower gold spammers and hacked accounts.
I won't play a game that is p2p and has cash shops with stuff that should be ingame even if they are costumes and don't give any stats.
The only exeption and depending if not abbused is for extra rare items like for example baby pets of bosses they should be rare so sold in a cash shop is not a problem for me till they don't give extra stats.
"Developers can't stop gold sellers, so they should sell gold themselves."
This is the same as saying "Developers can't stop bugs, so they should make every bug a feature", or "Developers can't stop cheaters, so they should give every player wall hacks and aimbots". At best this is a defeatist attitude whereby a bad game mechanic is accepted and worked into the game rather than being removed, at worst it's an excuse by a company looking to cash-in.
CCP just allow people to trade game time. there is no gold being *created* by CCP, it's just traded between players. you buy game time from CCP and sell it to another player for ISK.
Yeah I know but, in reality, it occurs. You can buy from CCP an item that you can sell in game for in game currency. I dont think that fucks up EVE's economy.
No. You are Buying Game time from CCP and selling the gametime to someone Else in Exchange for their hard Work getting the Isk in the first place.
I like the system. Its cleaner than just Spawning gold into the system, It gives people the chance to Play the game for Free if they are willing to work for it, And it lets me Safely Buy isk from another player.
AND most inportant of all for a game like Eve, It Dosent Fudge up the Player Driven Econamy. Now in games like Wow or STO, a Cash shop would only Leed to inflation of the Items in game. It would only be anoying to players. If CCP were just Makeing 500Million Isk for 15 Bucks then the Econamy of Eve would be in Shambels.
Plex is just a Easy way to transfer Isk. Not to Generate it. And unlike Other games, Eve has real Item loss and Money loss.
If ye love wealth greater than liberty, the tranquility of servitude; greater than the animating contest for freedom, go home from us in peace. We seek not your counsel, nor your arms. Crouch down and lick the hand that feeds you; May your chains set lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen.
Samuel Adams
From were did you get that? I didn't say that.
Developers are having a hard time fighting them since the recent bombardment on accounts hacked so more measurments need to be implemented and not only from the devs but they also need to make the internet more secure.
Lazy people keep on business the botters so why instead of buying it from unkown people and risking on getting hacked they bought it from the game itself? that could potentionally bankrupt the botters if it succeeds and the devs don't become greedy.
Like I said in my OP if this method is implemented the game needs to change too meaning new ideas so that gold is not the only currency in the fantasy world like in x zone you need to collect caps (non tradeable) to buy stuff from these vendors and gold means nothing here.
Stuff like this could potentionally lower the gold spammers/botters not all of course but there need to be more protection while playing a game because these botters can ruin people's experience and leave the game.
This wouldn't deter gold sellers at all -- they would just undercut the price and make it cheaper to buy from them than the game company, IMO.
Personally, I don't think there is a solution to this. As long as there are players willing to BUY gold, there will be gold sellers. The key would be to get rid of the demand, but I don't see that happening.
The gaps in logic from the above quote are ridiculous.
You really think a gold farmer has any chance at making a profit when the company can simply make gold? You believe that gold selling companies can undercut the company which can make as much gold as they want whenever they want? Only way that could happen is if the game company set a ridiculous price per gold that was static leaving an opportunity for gold sellers to even have a market share.
Simply put if a game company made the price of gold dynamic then these gold selling businesses wouldn't be economically viable at all. An easy solution is have the price of gold decrease as the amount of currency available to the market increases. So gold prices are high on brand new servers but are much less on established servers. You cannot beat the company that can automate the creation and delivery of gold at any price they want.
Honestly all companies should sell gold because there will always be a demand for it. Why let some other business endanger the account safety of your players in addition to making money off of your creation? Its all about implementation. Don't make it necessary just a convenience.
To put it plain and simple... A game is meant to be played for fun. Any soft of outside interfearence (botitng, goldselling and unbalanced cashshops) would ruin the gameplay for me.
If a dev is supporting goldselling in their own cashshop, then the player who spends the most money will have the biggest advantage. And don't tell me this is not true. As a former Lineage II private-server player, I've seen it happen. Players actually spending $1.000s would get the best gear in the game and they were virtually gods themselves. I would not want to see that happen in P2P/F2P games.
I know in regular games the items won't be as overpowered as the ones handed out on the private servers, but still. Having the ability to spend real money for in-game currency, and thus buy yourself an advantage over an other because you can buy the best gear around, would make things unbalanced.
With that, there's the in-game economic problem. Allowing players to buy gold from the dev, the market would go haywire. In-game currency is worth dick sice you can buy as much as you want. So where a normal level 10 item would cost <x> in AH, with a dev-supported goldshop the game would cost you <10x>. Meaning the regular non-gold buying player would not be able to participate in the game efficiently anymore.
That's why I said and keep on saying if this method is implemented the game also needs to change so that money is not the only currency used everywere.
As long as our real-world economy is currency based, games will be like this as well. Changing the way players wlll gain items/advantages in game from currency to (lets say) crafting, won't matter for your poll. If a game is crafting based, then money is not worth anything, and thus won't the devs sell the money in-game anyway...
CCP just allow people to trade game time. there is no gold being *created* by CCP, it's just traded between players. you buy game time from CCP and sell it to another player for ISK.
Yeah I know but, in reality, it occurs. You can buy from CCP an item that you can sell in game for in game currency. I dont think that fucks up EVE's economy.
True, and the PLEX systems is a very good one IMO. but there is a qualitative difference between what CCP do and them selling ISK. CCP sell game time: end of story as far as they're concerned. This means that they have no special incentive to meddle with the economy or game balance, unlike companies with cash shops.
Give me liberty or give me lasers
To me cash shops are as bad as having gold sellers, so if a developer decided to use this method to 'combat' gold sellers I would avoid such a game, or walk away from it were I already playing.
The real culprit of the issue is the people who buy gold. If developers really want to deal with the problem of bots, gold sellers, and breached accounts, then they need to come down hard on the people who try to purchase ingame advantages not intended by the developers. Without demand, there is no reason for the sellers to be so aggressive. The players who really want to buy their way to the top, then they should play a game that is designed for that, i.e. an item shop game
The MMO player economy works just like any other economy, albeit a lot simpler. So if you increase the amount of gold that's circulating, inflation will happen. Meaning, now that there's 1000g in circulation, instead of 100g, what once cost 1g will now cost 10g. The developer isn't going to just grind for gold and then sell it; they're going to instead just program more gold into your pockets. Even gold sellers put in the effort to earn the gold, so even if they do accellerate the decline of the economy, it's still natural when compared to creating gold out of thin air.
Instead of condoning hyper-inflation, the developers need to do everything they can to preserve the ingame economy.
Now..., if there isn't a player economy, meaning players don't buy or sell things to each other, then the developers could sell gold, since all that'd be doing is allowing you to get what you could get at any time, just a bit earlier.
Simple answer, I don't know if it's been said already but:
If the games sold cash themselves, then it would ultimately destroy anything that would even resemble an Economy. Game economies, are just as important to balance as classes or levels, if not more so. Gold sellers sell gold just as Exxon sells gas. Supply & Demand. If Demand is over supply, prices go up. If supply is over Demand, prices go down. It's ever fluctuating, where as if the developers sold it they would get hammered if they sold it in the same way and be accused of price gouging. To sell it at one low rate would make the economy completely unpredictable and impossible to balance.
Extremely short answer:
None of the options fit. If developers sold gold, it would destroy their game and reputation.
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Devs selling gold are one and the same problem to me as goldsellers , because they both increase inflation and the result is we (the players that play the game as intended) have to grind/harvest longer for the same item we want to buy on the auctionhouse.
To me goldbuying is the same as cheating. You cheat you get banned in games. They already ban goldsellers. Why not the buyers too? Name and shame them in worldchat at the same time they recieve the ban. I bet there will be a rapid decline in goldbuying.
Really? So in Eve you can buy Plex and sell it for ISK and that DOESN'T qualify as item mall behavior, but in a game like RoM, you can buy potions and sell them for gold and that DOES qualify as item mall behavior? Methinks there is a double standard here...
~~ postlarval ~~
Other. Why? Because I would not support the MMO companies selling gold for a game in which THEY SET THE PRICES ON ITEMS THAT YOU NEED TO BUY. I have capitalised the preceding so that it can sink in. If the game company sells the gold, they will control the market. This means they COULD manipulate auction prices and force players to purchase their gold for inflated amounts that they decide upon. But why are we having the discussion in the first place. Gold obtained in any way other then through the resouces provided by the game are not ethical. The discussion should not be who to buy the gold from but why peopel should not buy gold outside of the game proper.
Let's party like it is 1863!
Developers selling gold is the only surefire way to prevent gold selling and deter 95% of all account theft. You purists think you stand on some moral high ground but you only put others and yourselves at threat by clinging to some antiquated values of fair play or whatever you want to call it. The account threat isn't interested in playing fair at all.
The primary difference between eve and other mmo's that sell stuff that can be resold, is that unlike a potion your selling 30 or 60 days of gameplay it's a win-win for people who need isk and people who need game time. A potion is a one use piece of junk item that will only last effect wise for maybe 8 hours(never really looked into these).
I'm a gaming purist that does not want any artifical, non-gamplay means of having gold or items available for purchase with real money. That about sums up my interest. Over the last 10 years, you'd think that if developers were really interested in substantially minimizing and making extremely tough, the means for a bot and gold sellers to exist, those developers would have. So this brings me to beg the question, do we really know that the developer or publishing team really isn't in on much of this gold-selling anyway?
I bet most mmo hosters probally run the gold selling sites themselves, Think of it. They ban so called gold buyers and sellers once in a blue moon but really. I don't see why they wouldn't sell currency for their own games. when alots of people buy it. Many people hate to farm money to buy 1 item. If they got a job they could just buy the gold for less time needed than if they actually farmed it. Take maple story for example. 50 mil is fairly cheap from those sellers, but I bet you in game it'd take a long time to earn that legit, at least at lower levels. People just don't got the time to spend hours farming money in a mmorpg when they could be doing more productive things in game.
Personally gold sellers and buyers don't bug me much. The market is there, the mmorpg devs are pretty much powerless to stop it. Might as well open up a site yourself and embrace it, offer lowest rates on the market for your game to put the other farm sites out of business <-- best way overall to stop it.
You do have some good suggestions though. However in alot of cases, people buying gold insted of farming it, keeps them in said game, people can only take so much farming before they get so bored they just quit. People blame high prices in games on the rmt indistry, but the rmt indistry doesn't set the prices, all the normal players do, and the longer a game is out the worse the economy usually gets. its not so bad in pay to play mmo's but in f2p mmo's the longer the games been out the more everything rises in costs.
F2P mmo hosters need to learn a lesson (Gpotato your one of them especally), When you can buy gold from a site to buy a cash shop item, for cheaper than it'd cost you in the cash shop, the hoster just loses money, in a way. Rappelz is a good show of this with how often CS items get traded around. DUngeon Fighter online is another example. buying 1 Avatar piece (Deco clothes that add stats) is about 2.50 USD, however most normal avatars sell in shops for 200-500k, up to 3-4 mil (3-4 mil is for atk or cast speed mostly). However you could buy 10mil gold for 5-6 bucks, and end up getting WAY more for your money.
"An MMORPG could be completely diffirent from WoW. Just look at games like Dofus, Wizard101 or EVE. But as it is, most of the Western MMOs are trying to succeed by out-WoWing WoW. It's like an army of 10 sports games made about same sports, and barely none about other sports. WoW clone is an accurate description of those games, it manages to convey much information with only two words."
-Poster on mmorpg.com
Rift: World of Warcraft clone #9321 Nothing special to see here move along.
Aside from the fact that they are hacking/cracking other people's accounts in order to maintain a large inventory? Aside from the fact that RMT (Real Money Trading) is an illegal black market operation which goes against most game's TOS or Eulas?
Well, if you're okay with those two small issues, then consider the fact that these bastards destroy your video game's economy. They really, really truly and utterly destroy the economy. They jack up prices and monopolize all important in-game items so that the players are FORCED to buy gold from them.
Also, they are getting paid to play a video game for you.
You can't use the tools if you don't know they exist...
http://www.ic3.gov - Internet Crime Complaint Center - Report cyber crimes to the FBI.
http://www.spamcop.net - SpamCop.net - Report spam and scam emails.
http://www.networksolutions.com/whois/ - Network Solutions WHOIS - Investigate and reveal suspcious websites.