The armor equipment is so lvl capped that you can’t wear anything twinky. This soloution works well for both the avid players who want everything the game has to offer and the casual player who SOE yes you SOE seems to hate and loves to forget about. Only exception is EQ2 which is making vallant steps for soloing and small groups and the working folks. Attunable armor and weapons rock.

As for in-game advertising it’s inevitable so why fight it? Well I’m going to avoid any company whose product has in-game advertising. I won’t fight it, but I sure won’t buy it either. Oh, my money isn’t enough? So you’re going to put ads in to make up the difference? Better get more adds because I’m buying less of your games.

I hate marketers.

There’s another solution to RMT: design your game so that it is more fun to get gold than it is to have gold. If 90% of the playerbase didn’t regard acquiring stuff as “the grind” and dislike it, the market for RMT would be much smaller.

I\’e2\’80\’99m starting to come around to the get-your-gold-from-the-company-store viewpoint, even though as a hardcore gamer my inner being recoils at the prospect, simply because it\’e2\’80\’99s going to come from somewhere, and having the game company exert some control over it implies that it\’e2\’80\’99s being handled by people with an enlightened self-interest in maintaining a healthy in-game ecosystem – something which third party gold farmers couldn\’e2\’80\’99t give a rat\’e2\’80\’99s arse about.

Woohoo!

There’s still some more room over here on the dark side. Scooch on in… a little more…

I thought UO should have charged more per month for accounts with houses (and more and more the bigger).

Used to think Avatars too, but the replay ability they add (and character transfers later, then the family member gets their own account and wants their character off yours and over to theirs) I think is more worthwhile.

Ought to just sell characters, rather than character “slots”. Un-deletable. Buy before you try.

Mules for cheap. Lumberjack is 25 cents, mighty warrior (level 1, but with lots of potential) is $5.

I don’t think you ought to stop at managing p2p transactions, but just make stuff out of thin air and sell it, even.

Or better yet, LEASE it.

Inappropriate ads are horrible. Appropriate ones are content.

Hollywood hasn’t even got this perfected, but we mostly have it stupid and irritating.

By the way everyone, just kidding about all the above for now.

Mudflation is evil, and should be faced with determination and a sharp pin.

Lacero, well, it’s a LOT lower inflation than straight sales. It only adds whatever extra they ground out for the sales, and then that has knockon effects on supply for many comodifies, which means…

So, a 0 inflation direct version of isk selling would sell isk and minerals, the relative price of these would depend on the amount of each currently circulating in game. In some ways this way is better than CCP’s approach because it prevents people buying GTC with ISK and then selling them on ebay for cash, although as you say characters can be laundered in the same way.