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Selling Online items/money for real live cash and MMORPG.com
01Neptune01
Member UncommonPosts: 82
We all know some people farm money/item etc etc and sell them for real life money on MMORPGs. We also know that this can ruin the economy on the game for the normal people who dont buy things for real life money. As well as that most games (i think) have banned it and its ilegal to sell that companys properties. I know that World of warcarft (what im playing atm) is trying epecially to cut out this kind of ilegal game ruining stuff.
So why does MMORPG.com have advertisements for sites that take part in these ilegal activitys? Its a website for people who play MMORPG's and your advertising stuff that destorys the games. Stuff like the IGE advert im talking about. I know they need to make money some how to keep the site running but still i find this abit i dont know scruffy i guess.
Tell me if im wrong or something, but from what see its pretty bad.
Comments
I rather blame the devs who design poor features in their games rather then blame peoples that abuse them.
If peoples abuse weakness, then the devs either give way to those weakness(like Vanguard) or they manage to make them irrelevant with a good game design where peoples actually enjoy earning what they care for(easy to do, solo uberness been achieve throught solo only, group uberness throught grouping, casual uberness throughts casuals zones only, and so on).
The devs want to create a simple 1 system where 95% of the players are doing stuff they dont like, well, I will be all the happier and applaud IGE myself, althought I will never participate in any form.
If you like something, you wont buy stuff to jump steps in it. So the best way is to make sure you progression system is logical(no raiding/PvP crap after you solo or group up to a level), where PvP lover start to PvP right NOW and work in their PvP setting, with or without levels. Where the carebear I am, can work in PvE zones and only group or solo in order to achieve what I care for...and so on. Raiders need to be able to raid NOW, the first time they log on...not after they earn some silly levels who have nothing to do with raiding, you may consider group earned gear if you want, as a trivial secondary bonus, not as an obligation damn it.
You blame IGE? I blame Blizzard, SoE and all the others! It is fun but IGE have not make much money with CoH, because in CoH, you dont need to do stuff you dislike(almost not).
- "If I understand you well, you are telling me until next time. " - Ren
Oh joy, let's do this again!
Any mmorpg that has requires you to buy in-game items for real cash economy, must be a lot more crazy than buying softwares online.
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Give me lights give me action. With a touch of a button!
For profit. mmorpg.com is a business. If you don't like it, you could leave?
"Whoever controls the media controls the mind..-'Jim Morrison"
"When decorum is repression, the only dignity free men have is to speak out." ~Abbie Hoffman
Sort of.
But I still think it's still insane. It's actually scary and risky that if something wrong if someone buys the item off of you using real cash and he loses it in two minutes, the chances of having the game takin too seriously is high. Sort of like wasting your real money rather than time.
While subscription fees could of been a better solution IMO.
If project entropia charged monthly subscription fee, I would defenitly go for it.
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Give me lights give me action. With a touch of a button!
Man is this topic done to death yet ?
Think about this for a second though. There are companies out there (Fox, CBS etc) who are happy, nay gleefull to make money out of something like the Asian Tsunami or the Terry Shaibo case. When put in perspective this is almost a non issue.
In fact at the risk of total topic hijack, I dont know why the newstainment networks even bothered showing any human aspect to the Tsunami and didnt just put the disaster footage on with cheezy music in the background and an advertisement bar running along the bottom. You could see they were itching to do it... yet they still cower behind the word "news" unable to come to terms with their own cynisim and greed..... pathetic...
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"MMOs, for people that like think chatting is like a skill or something, rotflol"
http://purepwnage.com
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"Far away across the field, the tolling of the iron bell, calls the faithful to their knees. To hear the softly spoken magic spell" Pink Floyd-Dark Side of the Moon
"We feel gold selling and websites that promote it damage games like Vanguard and will do everything possible to combat it."
Brad McQuaid
Chairman & CEO, Sigil Games Online, Inc.
Executive Producer, Vanguard: Saga of Heroes
www.vanguardsoh
I can't see any issue at all with games that elect to sell ingame items for real money, like Project Entopia, or the upcoming Xbox2 Live games. If the company announces it to the players "Hey, we're making a game that you will have to pay money for ingame items in", then players have a choice: play it, or not. It's up to the player. If they play it, they know precisely what they are getting into. If they decide they don't like that payment style, they don't have to play!
That's an entirely seperate issue from people who break the EULA they agreed to when they started playing a game, by selling/buying items in a game where those actions are against the EULA/rules of the game. I have no respect for those people, and consider them in the same category as those who use hacks or exploits to gain an advantage over players who play the game by the rules.
It's worth noting though that I play mostly in pvp games, where this sort of thing matters much more than it might in full-pve games. That perspective undoubtably affects my opinion.
Owyn
Commander, Defenders of Order
http://www.defendersoforder.com
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***OOoOOoOOoo Lookie, a dead horse!***
<kick!>
That was fun.
<Wanders back to his cave>
Richard J. Cox
"There were much of the beautiful, much of the wanton, much of the bizarre, something of the terrible, and not a little of that which might have excited disgust."
No, not a dead horse.
Maybe a cash cow for mmorpg.com is a better description.
Owyn
Commander, Defenders of Order
http://www.defendersoforder.com
Well looking at the responces I though i'd post again,
To the guy who said he didnt see how selling ingame stuff ruins the game ill explain,
When someone buys things off the net for real life money say some gold in world of warcraft they will spend it. Now normally people can only sell things that others have the money for but when someone can just buy the money they can buy whatever they want ingame. The seller sells his over price items (over priced to the normal player) and will carry on at this price as along as people buy from him. This means people who play the game normally are exculded from buying that stuff as they cannot afford it. Then theres accounts, when someone buys a character with real life money, im sure many of us have been with people who have, they are crap at playing it. This often results in painful experiences where die usually insues. Just some of the reasons who it messes up games. Everquest is a good example of a game affected buy this, when i started it just before the LDoN expansion came out i could hardly buy anything. The stuff was so over priced i had to stick with the shit that dropped on the lvl 20 mobs while others in the group made me feel useless with their twinked up char's.
Really they might as well be openly advertising "Get your game hacks and exploites here for only £10:99". I think the people who posted here saying theres nothing wrong are Probably just the sad low lives that use such a service.
I find the opposite to be true.
Farmers, wether they are farming for Ebay or farming for ingame coin, keep prices on high quality items lower than they would be normally, because they farm more of them than would usually be in circulation, and thus you see more for sale and prices are lower because of competition.
As for grouping with players who bought an account and don't know how to play their character, well you can find plenty of gamers who still can't play their classes after having played them for months. In either situation, you would simply stop grouping with them, problem solved.
"We feel gold selling and websites that promote it damage games like Vanguard and will do everything possible to combat it."
Brad McQuaid
Chairman & CEO, Sigil Games Online, Inc.
Executive Producer, Vanguard: Saga of Heroes
www.vanguardsoh
I would be nice if this was the case and thats its problem solved but it aint, which is why so many people are trying to stop it and why the games are trying to prevent it too.
Actually, the game companies have to make at least token attempts to stop it, because otherwise they could be in trouble with legal ownership later.
Logic flows this way:
1) You can only sell that which you own (or that which you are licensed to sell by the owner).
2) Once you buy something, you own it.
3) People selling items from games are selling company property; the game owners own all those items, not the player.
4) If game companies do not at least put up a show of being against selling these items, that could be construed as authorizing those sales.
5) If those sales are authorized by the company, then the buy really WOULD own those items, and the company would not.
6) If that were true, the new owners could sue the company for loss or damage should the game ever close its servers down.
So game owners are very, very careful to ensure that everything they do keeps those items legally their property, not the players' property.
Owyn
Commander, Defenders of Order
http://www.defendersoforder.com
Incorrect.
They try to stop it because it represents a revenue stream they are not participating in with what they consider to be their assets.
Well at least the topic is Bi-weekly now.
Fyi your model on currency sales ruining the ingame economy are and have been proven false. It does not affect the game in any manner that a legitimate player cannot. Im not going to debate it anymore its futile..do a search for my post's it should not be hard to find, Ive given a few lessons on basic mmorpg economics.
As for mmorpg.com having the advertisment..I will sum my very long indepth post up like this. Unless you are willing to ante up $140 a month give or take a little to access content like this, to pay for Hosting, Web mastering, Bandwidth and a slew of other Extremely expensive cost's. Then you can take your morality of the Website argument and cram it into unpleasant places. Dont like the advertisement? use a popup blocker or ignore it..Or better yet..take my advise..Click it..It generates money for the website and cost's Ige money if you dont buy. Otherwise..quit wasting your breath.
Actually, I think the ads are paid on appearances, not click throughs. Which means sitting there hitting refresh over and over would work... ? Of course, then you're hurting every other advertiser too. =P
Bottom line of peoples' gripes with the ads showing on MMORPG.com is that the site, supposedly, has an anti-cheat code of ethics. And advertising IGE doesn't really fit into that code well, in many peoples' minds. In other words, if you're going to advertise IGE, don't pretend that your site is standing on firm ethical ground. There's a very narrow line between advertising a company like IGE (which makes money through a service that allows players to cheat) and advertising a company that sells hacks for MMO clients (which makes money by selling methods for players to cheat). The line exists - there is a difference between the two. But I think that people who say the line is very clear or distinct are fooling themselves.
Owyn
Commander, Defenders of Order
http://www.defendersoforder.com
Clickthroughs are the universal way of tracking a customer through a banner ad. Further, it's a matter of having unique customer clickthroughs...not simply a count.
Yes, that is your gripe. But not everyone agrees that it is cheating. A datastream sniffer that alters packets is universally seen as a cheat...and these are the items upon which most actions are taken, as well as emulation servers and other blatent copyright infringements. No court in the world has yet specified that the resale of a virtual item constitutes copyright infringement or other such crime.
Again, you are defining this as "cheating". That is your definition and the definition of like-minded people. Many other people do not agree with you, and thus it is simply your opinion. It is not, however, defined in the ToS of this site and thus your implication of hypocrisy is misplaced.
Actually... If you do a web search for Mythic vs BSI? You'll see some interesting stuff. From one article about the case (http://news.com.com/2100-1040-832347.html)
Mythic won on all counts. Their right to prevent sales of their property was upheld in court. The defense of "selling one's time, not the items" was overturned as illegitimate. Essentially, the court case was a landmark one because it totally upheld the rights of an MMO company to not see the items from their games sold in secondhand markets.
Whether or not companies elect to push the issue is another matter entirely. But the legal issue, to date, has been found in favor of the MMO company. Selling ingame items from games that not not allow it is illegal, in the US at least.
Owyn
Commander, Defenders of Order
http://www.defendersoforder.com
Incorrect.
They try to stop it because it represents a revenue stream they are not participating in with what they consider to be their assets.
Exactly. It's called envy.
"We feel gold selling and websites that promote it damage games like Vanguard and will do everything possible to combat it."
Brad McQuaid
Chairman & CEO, Sigil Games Online, Inc.
Executive Producer, Vanguard: Saga of Heroes
www.vanguardsoh
"...not everyone agrees that it is cheating."
Gaining an advantage in a game by violating it's agreed upon rules is cheating. That's not an opinion, it's the definition of the word.
Farmers and ebayers (and sleazy fan-sites) may rationalize and obfuscate, but the bottom line is pretty simple.
You have to agree to a ToS that includes a set of game rules before you can play an MMOG. If those rules forbid the out-of-game sale of items for real money, and you're doing it anyway, then you're cheating.
Actually... If you do a web search for Mythic vs BSI? You'll see some interesting stuff. From one article about the case (http://news.com.com/2100-1040-832347.html)
Mythic won on all counts. Their right to prevent sales of their property was upheld in court. The defense of "selling one's time, not the items" was overturned as illegitimate. Essentially, the court case was a landmark one because it totally upheld the rights of an MMO company to not see the items from their games sold in secondhand markets.
Whether or not companies elect to push the issue is another matter entirely. But the legal issue, to date, has been found in favor of the MMO company. Selling ingame items from games that not not allow it is illegal, in the US at least.
They have the right to prevent, yes. That does not, in any way whatsoever, specify illegality of resale of items. Again, it has never been proven to be criminal or even a violation of the rights of ownership of the developer/producer. The courts merely upheld the institution's right to disallow such activity.
I do not call every violation of the ToS in a game cheating. When an unfair advantage is gained through such violation, then I agree it is cheating. I do not see resale of virtual items to be an unfair advantage, and hence I do not see it as cheating.