Comments on: Dystopia Online

By: Moose

Moose — Fri, 11 Jul 2008 00:21:51 +0000

This has been done in the West long ago, just not with graphics. It’s called Achaea.

By: Turlow

Turlow — Thu, 10 Jul 2008 17:31:28 +0000

If you can’t cash out your game money for RL cash, it is not gambling. No where in the article does it mention the ability to pull money out of the system. By the definition of gambling you have to have a chance to make a profit. Games of chance in Second Life, where you can cash out is gambling. Purchasing a chest in a system where the money only goes in is not gambling because no matter the outcome, you will not make money.

By: Paul

Paul — Thu, 10 Jul 2008 16:59:20 +0000

A curious aspect of eastern gamer culture is that most of them play MMOs in semi-public settings, whereas the lan centers of the west seem to be mostly dominiated by FPS games. I wonder if peer pressure contributes towards that need to overachieve. The article certainly makes it sound like its being used, quite effectively.

By: Iconic

Iconic — Thu, 10 Jul 2008 08:18:57 +0000

Take out the random element and this sort of thing is very feasible in western markets.

The biggest problem is liabilty. When you start selling identifiable goods to people instead of just selling them a service, you are opening up a lot of doors that you might not intend to go through, but some one else might.

By: Malderi

Malderi — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 20:08:32 +0000

I like the comparison of a previous commenter with Magic: The Gathering. The end result is very similar. Lots and lots of money, the only difference being you didn’t have to keep playing to keep going – of course, you needed some skill and familiarity with decks to play, but you didn’t need to play x hours a day. But, of course, you did need to bust some rather large amounts of cash to have a hope of playing competitively.

So the economics are similar, I think, but the timesinks are most definitely not. Other games, like WoW, have similar timesinks but dissimilar economics. So we’ve gotten both parts of it, just in different games.

By: robusticus

robusticus — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 16:10:51 +0000

For my part I prefer to focus on stuff like the potential for dynamic histories of various exact copies of a virtual world (MMO). Where history is determined by players. In other words, parallel worlds without players would have, theoretically, the exact same histories, even if it were measured in millions of years.

That to me is MMO. Until such a time arrives I will have to continue with the Soul-Caliber-MMO-pwns-your-noob-roll-playing-games joke.

By: Relmstein

Relmstein — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 15:56:54 +0000

I would think any Western game that used a similar RMT set up would probably attract government attention as a form of online gambling.

Micro-transactions and RMT are not going to replace subscriptions in the western market until players feel they get a better benefit from those payment methods. At the moment most players like to know there is a limit to how much they have to spend on a game each month. A lot of people are fearful about RMT based games taking large amounts of money from them, especially if they really got into the game. Basically I don’t see RMT becoming popular until Americans have better control over their spending habits.

By: Drakks

Drakks — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 15:19:38 +0000

If Blizzard put in a means for people to bet on Arena matches RIGHT NOW, real money or not, that crap would be huge because, and I’ve said this before, people are crazy.

By: Michael Donnelly

Michael Donnelly — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 14:17:17 +0000

Would a WoW player buy this for $.50? Even if you could only buy 1 per day? ($15/mo)

Quagmirran’s Chest of Lazy Loot

“Chance of heroic drop from this boss, epic gem, or 20-slot bag.”

(vendor would sell QCLL and its ilk to anyone, but higher chests like Felmyst’s require gear tier to buy)

I think so.

There’s a lot of gray between casino-only-no-hard-work and we-hate-all-RMT-except-WTCG-but-won’t-ban-buyers. A *lot* of gray.

Double the income plus a little extra hook to keep subscribing to get more rolls of the die. Tempting.

By: ubvman

ubvman — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 09:33:47 +0000

Y’all debating the morality of casino operators. The name of the game and the nature of it does not matter, just how fast you can fleece the marks out of their money, and as much as possible without driving them off. The GAME/phat lewts/PK prestige are like the cabaret floor shows to designed to draw the punters in.

For all you westerners claiming to see the coming of the western MMOG apocalypse ~ Such hardcore RMT fleecing at the ZT Online will not come to the US or the West in general. For one thing – when real $$$$ is involved, Americans have their own charming quirks – CIVIL LITIGATION. Exploding stars? And I lost $500? Ganked for $1000? Fuck that! SUE!

Also, the crap shoot of opening $$$ purchased chests to get a chance at phat loot? That is online lottery aka online gambling that is illegal in the states. RMT stuff can be translated into taxable online revenue – so we need to add the IRS into the mix. Lots of legal federal landmines.

So yeah, keep it on perspective. Lots of stuff won’t fly in the West and ZT Online opening in the states will make America’s sue happy lawyers very happy.