If Blizzard would put up a vendor selling Black Temple epics for real USD tomorrow, the (high end) game would instantly implode. Period.

Now I don’t pretend to know how large percentage of WoW users actually participate in the race to raid epic-level content, but if the “top reward” of that side of the game would be instantly available if your credit card has the room for it, that gameplay would instantly lose meaning.

Do you people have any clue to the concept of “a game”? You talk about virtual worlds – they are a different beast. I couldn’t care less about the business going on around, for example, Second Life. SL is not a game. What I (and many others, I’d guess) seek in these online games is a multiplayer persistent game. Games, by definition, have a set of rules. MMOs bend this by constantly “altering the rules” via patches, expansions and other adjustments. This has been accepted as long as the changes are deemed fair. Yet, we already get huge shitstorms over completely insignificant “nerfs” altering the balance of the game by just a teeny bit. The end result would be utter chaos if the whole point of the “high end” PvE in WoW would be instantly nullified by an item merchant that accepts VISA – and even the PvP would be going booboo pretty soon after that once everyone is fighting in mirror matches of ‘best’ combinations of class and gear. What’s the point of playing a game as an achiever if VISA triumphs over everything else?

Now I’m sure there are plenty of “games” (and I’m using this term here very loosely) where the concept of buying ingame things doesn’t break the fundamentals, or where it actually works because the game is designed with the concept in mind.

As a non-computer example I could pull out Magic: The Gathering. Newbies usually dismiss the game after a while because “it’s too expensive to compete” – yet all the pro-level players consider the pretty hefty cost of buying all the necessary cards as the cost of playing the game. (four copies of all “tournament-viable” cards out of the three sets published each year, with old sets rotating out). M:TG is still a great game – it’s just tad expensive to play, with the requirement to spend perhaps 1000-1500$ per year on cards.

You could do a WoW-lookalike with competitive PvP, and a wide selection of RMT-gear you can buy, and the price of participating would effectively be the cost of buying all the “worthy” gear combinations. Might work. I probably wouldn’t be interested, but that’s just personal preference – I’m not much of a PvP player.

Any player whining about the ‘monthly subscription fee barrier’ fails at math. Every single case of item-purchase based games I’ve sampled tend to add up to far more than 15$ a month if you want to truly “powergame” it. Yes, we need demos, buddy keys and other things like that allowing people to sample before forking out for the game. Heck, I agree that the client should always be free (and it most likely would be in WoW, except that Blizzard wants the exposure it gets from shipping shiny boxes to bazillion retailers, and retailers want to charge money for the box), but the fact that the game requires a predictable monthly fee for the access to the servers is a non-issue – except to those who fail at math and think it’s cheaper while they are nickel-and-dimed to death with RMT items.

People have been selling characters and collected items in the games since the 1980s. I had my first experience with it while running GEnie’s games in 1989; someone sold their character in one of our text role-playing games to another player for $2000. I was kind of amazed at the time, because it meant transferring the whole account, so the guy was basically selling his GEnie handle and forum posts, as well. After phone calls to both buyer and seller to make sure it was a legit deal and not a scam, I went ahead and approved it. Further investigation showed such sales had been going on for a couple years; I just hadn’t noticed it.

Looking at it as “buying victory” is short-sighted, since you can’t “win” an MMORPG; it is a virtual life and virtual identity and the goals are morphing continually. Some people are willing to trade money for time in the pursuit of that and always will be. Most other people won’t care. As Greg noted, they are playing the game their way, with their own objectives; how you play the game is relatively immaterial to them.

The experience of the industry has been that, when we start hearing that “that major change will lose you most of your customers!”, what actually happens is a rise in the subscriber base. For example, when we announced what we were changing in UO to stem the merciless newbie and gang ganking, all we heard was, “your game will be dead in 6 months.” What actually happened was that the subscriber base nearly DOUBLED in 9 months, from about 110,000 to 200,000. About the only recent example against this position that I can think of is the NGE in SW: Galaxies.

The take-away from this is that a small core group fears any major change in the game or business model. Fair enough; those changes are altering the nature of the world they fell in love with. In a perfect world, we’d get it correct on launch and wouldn’t need to make alterations in design or business model. But we don’t, so we do make changes.

What we’ve been discovering lately is that the Koreans and Chinese have it right; the free-to-play/item sales model opens up whole new markets. Most of us don’t have the resources to do it the way Blizzard did; spend 10 years building your reputation for making great games, then spend more money and time on your first MMO than anyone has ever spent before. We have to find other ways to get people to look at our game and decide if they want to stay around. Removing the monthly subscription fee barrier is one way to do that and it is working. You’ll see more and more of it, because it successful worldwide.

It may not be your cup of tea, but it is a cup being sipped by 10s of millions worldwide right now. Welcome to the future.

@Jarnis “We need more free demos and trials, but BUY YOUR WAY TO VICTORY is NOT A GAME. Western audiences will not pay or play such crap.”
That would incorrect. You seem to be confusing the average gamer with your own personal views. Most people who scream about RMT is evil make the same mistake. WoW would not lose any significant number of players at all because the average person just doesn’t care if someone else is “buying their way to victory”. Most people play games to play games and could care less how everyone else around them plays games but you are not “most people” (see below)
You obviously have no clue how a Free-to-Play plus item selling game actually works. Instead you know how “those damn gold farmers ruin my game” works. Which is not how a real FTP game actually works. A mind is a terrible thing to waste – so please go get educated.

@Jarnis”If a company wants to try that with a new game, I say go ahead, knock yourself out. Don’t whine when you go bust. I won’t touch it. If a company turns an existing game into a sanctioned RMT mess because the beancounters thought it would be a neat way to get revenue, I will shitlist them for all eternity.”

You, like so many other people who read on post on game-dev blogs, are NOT the people who make up the bulk of people who play games. In fact if you know that this blog even exists you are “hard core”. Maybe no in the sense of your game playing but in your general out-of-game experience. So by posting here you actually elevate yourself one step higher in the chain away from joe-average gamer.

Now with that established you must realize: People, like you, who even know Broken Toys exists, ARE NOT the support base for a game like WoW. So you and everyone else who has achieved your “level” by reading this site can “shit-list” any company you want and it won’t make a difference. You are not the mainstream – you do not make up the bulk of the player base. Thus – your drama-queen reactions to the entire concept are meaningless – you are fringe – thus they do not care about you or your poop-cover lists.

Oh and lots and lots and lots of not particularly uber, but cute or interesting looking costumes.

I was very very skeptical of the Cash Shop model, but I play Sword of the New World and I wish they had gone for a pure cash shop model. I’ve also played Maplestory and Silk Road. The cash shop isn’t at all like RMT.

If those with the largest limit on their VISA win, the rest will pack their bags and go home. It’s no longer a game at that point.

Well isn’t that already similar to how it is now? Most people think that the top raiding guilds buy gold, even if it’s just to afford all the buffs and pots. (well pre the last WoW patch). And yet they still play. As long as there is no way to tell for sure if someone bought something it will just be rumor.

I don’t think people would leave. I have met lots of people that buy gold, and tons more that don’t even care, and they are all westerners. On my rp server there are not very many, but on my pvp server people even advertise over /trade. not just for gold but for selling characters. It seems rampant there.

Now I agree that it “ruins” the game for me and makes it too easy, like using a cheat code, and I don’t do it for that reason. But other people doing it doesn’t ruin the game for me. (there are arguments about effects on the economy I won’t get into since that’s a whole other issue, but I mean my personal enjoyment is not affected)

PVP is the only area that presents a problem. And you can easily fix that by saying in battlegrounds you can only wear gear you won in the BG or arena and buy from the vendor. Maybe the vendor can sell some entry level gear so everyone starts the same.

Actually, that is kinda interesting. BG/arena pvp would be totally separate from pve then, and complaints about gear would go away since it would be far easier to match up teams. hmm..

… and they would lose a large chunk of their subscribers. Instantly. Poof. Gone. Never coming back.

If those with the largest limit on their VISA win, the rest will pack their bags and go home. It’s no longer a game at that point.

Alternatively people will sum up the total cost of everything you can buy, and if that total cost is reasonable, then everyone will buy those things and call that the cost of playing the game. Then it’s time to check how much of a game there is left when everyone has the best they can buy via RMT. At that point it’s just another way of collecting subscription fees, and companies usually like constant revenue streams. Placing real dollar values on items also opens a huge can of worms in case you need to nerf something (or when that sword of demonslaying is indirectly made useless by new additions to the game, with new price tags)

Everyone needs to get used to it – its coming, and you can’t stop it and it’s a good thing. The Free-to-Play selling model will open up the MMO market in the west when people do not have to make an upfront purchase to try the game. No more wasting 50 bucks on a box only to find out the game is just not to your liking.

We need more free demos and trials, but BUY YOUR WAY TO VICTORY is NOT A GAME. Western audiences will not pay or play such crap.

If a company wants to try that with a new game, I say go ahead, knock yourself out. Don’t whine when you go bust. I won’t touch it. If a company turns an existing game into a sanctioned RMT mess because the beancounters thought it would be a neat way to get revenue, I will shitlist them for all eternity.

Then I suppose all the outside of game RMT that has gone on in UO, EQ, WoW etc is what? A tiny insignificant thing that doesn’t really exist? I think not.

I bet if WoW started selling $.25 Sword of Demonslaying tomorrow they would make a pile of money to put on top of their other piles of money neatly stacked on the other piles of money. Yes, people would bitch – the same people that bitch about everything but it would fly on big shiny wings.

Games that are built with selling items, unlockable characters and abilities as part of game play will fly too – if they are done well.

Everyone needs to get used to it – its coming, and you can’t stop it and it’s a good thing. The Free-to-Play selling model will open up the MMO market in the west when people do not have to make an upfront purchase to try the game. No more wasting 50 bucks on a box only to find out the game is just not to your liking.

if you want certain enhancements — special items, more abilities, unlockable characters — you pay for those.

Worst
Idea
Ever

Now if they offered certain content for fee, that may work in the West. That’s already done with expansions. But to suggest that we pay $.25 for a new Sword of Demonslaying just will not work. Charge more for in-game voice chat; access to auction houses; Specific zones; a certain number of instances; X hours of gameplay per week; etc, but definitely not virtual items.

Is WoW perhaps the most profitable MMO in the world?

I ask because if Ragnarok makes three times as much money as WoW does in addition to having three times as many subscribers, then there’s a lot of bad reporting going on. However, if Ragnarok online has 21 million subscribers in the same way that Second Life has 8 million, then I can begin to understand why the Ragnaroks and the Lineages haven’t been covered as much.