I don’t know a single gamer that hasn’t dipped into the RMT at one point or time. I’ve done it. I have learned from it. I am over it. It happens and it will continue to happen as long as games allow players to “buy” their way ahead. No matter how minuscule the advancement.

No. It’s standard in a few circumscribed cases.

Actually, he’s right. It’s the standard in almost all asian-made MMOs, and considering that the majority of MMO players are in asian playing asian games, then the majority of MMO players are in games that are pay-for-items games.

There’s more to the world that the USA and World of Warcraft. You are in the minority.

> Companies need to create items on demand to eliminate 3rd party RMT.

From a business person’s perspective, that certainly looks like the way to go. You’re printing free money! High barrier to entry (you have a monopoly), near zero production outlays (a few FTE’s in ops), and crazy high ROI.

From a gamer’s perspective, this is a design decision that drives their interest in the game. Although I wouldn’t be interested in playing a game where outspending your opponent is a component of the original game design (see: Magic the Gathering collectible card game), it would appeal to a certain subset of your audience.

Your challenge as the designer and publisher is to find ways to capture both audiences with one game: the RMT’rs and the hopeless holdbacks like me who still believe in the illusion of a level playing field.

No. It’s standard in a few circumscribed cases. SOE and EA are pushing to make it standard for THINGS I CARE ABOUT. Where it’s not standard yet and never will.

Despite everyone attempts to convince everyone else it’s a major phenomenon. It isn’t. It’s about a *minority* of players. And it’s the DIRECT CONSEQUENCE of IMMATURE game design. It’s a flawed principle and leads to flawed games.

As with griefing. It’s a side effect of things going wrong. I expect these things to be CORRECTED. Not supported and encouraged.

I applaud their work to TRY and give us practical real-world data on the progress of legit, company endorsed RMT. Rather than sitting around hypothesizing about how bad it is. However, I do agree we should take this information and sprinkle a healthy dose of criticism.

This is directly harmful to the game in a way which facilitating trade ala Station Exchange is not. Either it’s compensated for in drops, which means you need to buy to compete, or it’s not in which case it’s inflationary.

And I’d point out that Eve is allready doing something different.

They are just trying to bruteforce the system for it to become “standard”. It starts with “persuasion”.

It is already the standard, Abalieno. It has been for a very long time. With and without game companies’ approval and support.

But these steps: optional servers, player-to-player trades only, timid consideration of non-impacting-items… they’re so minuscule I’m not sure his feet even moved.

On-order creation of game-money and game-impacting items is the future of this economic model: because it is already the present; just grossly inefficient, denied, damaging, and vilified… still it is what it is.

There could be other ways to handle economy than the way everyone’s been doing it, but by the time anyone is ambitious enough to try, publishers will be hooked on this delicious money.

TPRJones

Many people aren’t going to abandon their mains to go to new RMT servers, they’ll just keep using the 3rd parties.

RMT servers do nothing to compete with 3rd parties’ efficiency at accumulating wealth, so they do nothing to eliminate the harmful in-game behavior which is most of the problem they create in the first place.

Companies need to create items on demand to eliminate 3rd party RMT.

And not meaningless items either. Players pay for most of this stuff because it has an impact.

A non-RMT server option might be a potential once the 3rd party RMTers are driven out of business.

They don’t do it because they are paladins of information.

They do it so that it can get more acceptation and the gaming community start to swallow it. So they present it all good and positive.

They are just trying to bruteforce the system for it to become “standard”. It starts with “persuasion”.

I like the fact that they’re being so open about all this information, hopefully it will be helpful to other organizations looking to combat this issue.

I’m not sure that I’m optimistic about his final conclusion about RMT enabled games, as there will always be a market for important gameplay items, and the idea of user created content can wind up creating a lot more CS tickets than RMT ever did, but I’m speaking in the now. Its quite possible that future games will handle itemization quite differently.