Blizard does have this in World of Warcraft for the more rare items and all quest items. Though some items only become player attached after equiping (so they can be sold at auction houses within the game world).

Most selling of services for world of warcraft seem to be gold and power leveling. So the players can buy the items at auction house, while its just as bad. Fortuantly some good weapons and armour require specific levels to use, though not all.

If anyone is interested in playing Legends of Kesmai PM me at capaownson AIM ;)

I am pretty firmly in the "It's not a good thing" camp for the same reasons specified -- it ruins the in-game economy and there's nothing you can do about it, but there's a flipside to the coin.

Some people only find these games fun to play if they can be powerful. They may not have the time, energy, or desire to "level up" for untold hours to get to the point where it's fun for them. They see trading some real life cash as a fair trade -- akin to hiring someone else to do the "grunt work" for them, then hand the character off when they're done.

I'm curious how those of you more dead-set against it than I would respond to it, viewed in that light. To rephrase: If me going on ebay and buying some "uber" char for $1000 is wrong, is it also wrong for me to "hire" my nephew to play the game for me until he gets to that level, and pay him $1000 for doing it?

This has only touched on the trading of complete players. Trading items is a worse problem and unbalances the game to a much greater degree. For that reason I think developers should do as much as they can to curtail it, but no matter what they do, if there is any in-game economy at all that allows you to buy/trade/sell items, then there's a way to supplement it with real-world money.

End result? I just don't and won't play games with "uber" items. It's really the only "solution." I don't like the idea of the items to begin with, and I don't like character "levels" either.

I like more the idea of classless, levelless games. Still, gaining XP through whatever mechanisms are appropriate as fine, but the idea being the XP should go more towards not "can I use item X" but "how many different things can I do simultaneously."

One of the reasons I still play Planetside, even though the "RP" element is entirely nonexistant. A rank amature has just as much chance in a firefight as a veteran, the difference? It's just easier for a veteran to switch roles on the fly.

I'm also very much looking forward to FoM (formportal.com). I'm in the beta for that one and I can tell you it looks like they have a take on the problem, and a pretty clever solution.

Quote: "Being able to obtain ultra powerful items fo real money real is bad thing for the game play and the online economy of those people playing on them. I'm wondering why would someone be stupid enough to spend his hard earn money from his own job and use that money in the game which means he wasted time he did at his own real life job to use that money to buy virtual items instead of other more important commodity of life. "
...
"The idea of rich people being able to run circles around you (and due to PvP literally beat you up) just because they have lots of money to buy their way is a big turn off for many people"
...
"how many games out there actually want/designed for that kind of 'trade'?"

Have any of you heard of "Magic:The Gathering"? Or maybe "StarChamber"? They have "virtual" cards selling for real cash. The games revolve around the same principals questioned here, as do all collectable card games virtual or not. I agree it ruins gameplay since it boils down to who spends the most, not who is more skilled. CCG's are a marketing gimmick. However the issues we discuss here are not quite so new.

Quote: Original post by Anonymous Poster

Quote: "Being able to obtain ultra powerful items fo real money real is bad thing for the game play and the online economy of those people playing on them. I'm wondering why would someone be stupid enough to spend his hard earn money from his own job and use that money in the game which means he wasted time he did at his own real life job to use that money to buy virtual items instead of other more important commodity of life. "
...
"The idea of rich people being able to run circles around you (and due to PvP literally beat you up) just because they have lots of money to buy their way is a big turn off for many people"
...
"how many games out there actually want/designed for that kind of 'trade'?"

Have any of you heard of "Magic:The Gathering"? Or maybe "StarChamber"? They have "virtual" cards selling for real cash. The games revolve around the same principals questioned here, as do all collectable card games virtual or not. I agree it ruins gameplay since it boils down to who spends the most, not who is more skilled. CCG's are a marketing gimmick. However the issues we discuss here are not quite so new.

I think with M:TG at least, this is a rather different animal. That was a physical card collecting game long before it was an online game, and it was *always* about who could spend the most money.

You could either spend money on deck after deck after deck, slowly gathering the rare cards that were in the decks, or you could trade rare cards with friends, or you could go to a collector and buy them for outrageous prices.

Basically exactly like every other card game after it, and much the same as baseball card collecting -- the difference being that there was no 'game' that went along with baseball cards.

The "economy" of a card trading game, virtual or real, doesn't exist within the game itself like it does with an RPG -- it is entirely based on real money, in the real world, and skill rarely enters into it.

Quote: Original post by asymmetric
The "economy" of a card trading game, virtual or real, doesn't exist within the game itself like it does with an RPG -- it is entirely based on real money, in the real world, and skill rarely enters into it.

Yep, this is the key difference. A MMPOG has an economy within the game that can be unbalanced by an economy outside the game. Card trading games have no economy within the game to be unbalanced.

Hello all,

First-time poster, long-time lurker :)

I started this post as a reply to EL's Radu's post regarding ownership of items and the anger (usually expressed in the online equivalent of torches and mobs--the forum flamewar and abandoned accounts) resulting from loss of ownership of those items by the user base. What I ended up typing was long, and largely useless, like a term paper, but I culled it down to a few points. It's likely that any experienced game developer would know these things. However, I'm not one of those people so have pity on me if any of this is considered silly.

1. Never give players anything you don't want them to sell/keep forever/influence the game world with. It's better to give a character a hundred normal things than one super shiny fantastico and watch your game die. If you think that the super shiny fantastico would give your players or the few players that would ever have it a great time.. cool. It doesn't mean that the rest of your well thought out world will survive it, or the noobs.

2. The game economy is the single most important thing developed in a MMORPG of any kind. This is true of every live-action event I've ever been to, every tabletop rpg I've ever run etc. Players will latch on to a well-developed economy much more quickly and with much more fervor than any quest. Why? It's usually very accessible and gives a very quick return on investment with production skills at the lowest levels. It makes them feel loved and warm within an unfamiliar place and is the link between the world at large and their character's skills. If your economy is an afterthought, bad things will happen.

3. The counter to any selling of any game items in the real world for real money is three-fold and I take these lessons from real-world economics.

a. Make really valuable items expire or slowly decay (like gasoline) with use. Players who attain them will not want to sell them as much.

b. Avoid inserting really powerful items without spending a lot of time on game balancing. If the ultra powerful item is used to cause some effect, there should be an equal and opposing reaction in some other category. It should always be a trade off, but one the player is willing to make.

c. Set an algorithm for inflation and monitor the amount of money in the world. If you can, monitor the amount of items being purchased on different maps and in different areas of your game world. As people buy things and sell things, prices can go up and down. Put the names of people doing a lot of buying and selling activity on a publicly accessible site much like the top 50 players list.

What should happen if players are watching trends is movement around your maps looking for a cheap deal and counter trade. In addition this solution would also have the nice effect of having players hunt idiots who are using bots to power level or power buy/sell. Of course this is a nicety of only the PK maps but I'm in favor of PK everywhere (that's another story I'm into evolutionary psych in the real world)

These are only a few points and I'm sure there are many more that could be made. I'm strongly in favor of letting players do what they want, but any real harsh policy is unnecessary and only a step to cover up the shoddy game design that allowed the transgressions to be profitable in the first place.

That being said, we're all human and are limited by time and technology. The answers are out there :) but can we get them in the box?

Just a few words from a programming noob with a lot of experience in theory and other disciplines.

Al

Quote: Original post by Anonymous Poster

Quote: Original post by Anonymous Poster
The fact is they have no legal right to these "items" as the "property" in question doesn't exist in the first place.

Are you saying I don't own my Windows XP or any of my Word documents I make and they are not my "property"?

Well, windows XP is not your property, you licensed it from microsoft.
Word documents are yours [you don't own them, but hold copyright over them], as you created them.
Similarly, the items in the MMORPG belong to the developer who created them.

Quote: Original post by Telastyn

Quote: Original post by Anonymous Poster

Quote: Original post by Anonymous Poster
The fact is they have no legal right to these "items" as the "property" in question doesn't exist in the first place.

Are you saying I don't own my Windows XP or any of my Word documents I make and they are not my "property"?

Well, windows XP is not your property, you licensed it from microsoft.
Word documents are yours [you don't own them, but hold copyright over them], as you created them.
Similarly, the items in the MMORPG belong to the developer who created them.<!–QUOTE–></td></tr></table></BLOCKQUOTE><!–/QUOTE–><!–ENDQUOTE–><br><br>I'm failing to see the distinction here between "copyright owner" and "owner", specifically as you illustrate it between items in an MMORPG and a word document.<br><br>If I don't own a word document I create, but I do own the copyright, then how is it any different from the MMORPG items? You could say that the items in the MMORPG are not owned by the developers – but the copyright is.<br><br>In that case, there's absolutely no legal remedy (outside extra-legal EULAs etc) to restrict selling/trading of in-game items outside the game – trading characters or items &#111;n ebay is not copyright infringement.

The slight distinction is that ownership is transferred, copyright is not.

I was slightly incorrect in saying word docs you create aren't owned by you. Word docs are just bits on the hard drive. If you happen to own the hard drive, then you own the bits. If you used a university computer to make the word docs, then they'd own the bits [the actual word doc].

In the case of an MMORPG, the developers created the item, and the developers own the bits. Sure, they might not have much legal recourse to disuade sale/trade of items, but as a user you have absolutely no legal recourse should the developers decide to erase some bits they made from their own drive.

And once again, I am not a lawyer, and this is not legal advice.