I think that’s a good argument, honestly.

If players truly hated RMT, they’d stop doing it. It is a multi-billion dollar industry. I think the truth of the matter is many people don’t want RMT to go away, they want OTHER PEOPLE not to use it so they can maintain an advantage by using it for themselves.

I know it’s a poor analogy when closesly looked at, but the RMT thing is like the war on drugs to me from a high level. It’s something you cannot stop regardless of the time and effort put into it because it’s just something people will do, and something you only truly fight against because of the totally subjective stand point that it’s “wrong” in the first place. Legalize it to a reasonable extent and you demystify it, and I’m wagering the world (of warcraft) won’t end up exploding in a fit of anarchist chaos for it.

Hell, most games have such screwed up economies anyway I’m missing how it could possibly make things worse.

banning doesn’t work, when will people ever learn from history?

A forced implementation gamewide could provide some useful statistics on just how much of an impact it would have on the game experience. If it has no major downsides, then that’s useful data to have. And if it ends up destroying the game — well, who cares, it’s Vanguard.

First, the Station Exchange (SOE’s first attempt at maintaining a privately held RMT) failed and Live Gamer is seen as a “white knight” for SOE.

Second, along with the Station Exchange failure, SOE paid over a million dollars in penalties for credit card fraud from people participating in auctions.

Third, Live Gamer is a one year old venture capital based company that was given the SOE station exchange platform and coding and has at the moment, only two exchanges in existence. One for EQ2 and one for GoPets. Some of the members of its board of directors were employed by Sony divisions in the past.

Fourth, there is a demographic debate on the economic factors of RMT as well as a debate about the most reliable means of making a profit from online games … some say the subscription model is a better longterm profit center that will be less affected by economic downturns; others say that RMT is here to stay and will be the only major way for games to make money in the future.

Fifth, after Pirates of the Burning Sea, SOE acquisitions have focused on online trading card games (microtransaction and RMT based) and continue to do so. SOE game development has notably focused on Ft2P games like Free Realms and the Agency. SOE, as far as I can find, has no games of the EQ/EQ2/Vanguard style in the pipeline. It’s commitment to subscription based games is definitely questionable.

Sixth, development on Vanguard is down to about 4 devs at last count. SOE made a stealth change in the EULA in favor of Live Gamer RMTs and a community manager made a small announcement of the Live Gamer Exchange on the forums. No other dev or executive comments have been made. SOE’s commitment to VG itself has become more questionable.

Seventh, the community of Vanguard will be split into two playstyles. International players will not have access to the LG auction but will be playing on servers where US residents can buy and sell characters, items, etc.

My personal view: Vanguard was designed and balanced for 3 spheres of play. Sigil made a commitment to its player base that this game would be one where items and status would be earned. SOE publicly upheld that commitment to the VG community on various occasions.

Given the current items and prices available on the EQ2 exchange and given the small size of the VG player population, it’s hard to see how the fallout from the debacle of SOE’s bait and switch program, and its dishonesty to its customers would lead to worthwhile success on the LG Exchange.

Yes, RMT means your game design is broken. Game design is always broken, and there’s only so much you can do post-launch to fix what’s broken. Hiring a third party after the fact to police the gray market does not solve any problems.

But then again, if it brings more people to Vanguard and they spend more money, who’s to say?

Oh yeah, and how does this not mean that a third party necessarily will have access to player account information, with SOE’s consent?

…shouldn’t the push be to fix the broken game design, not whine about it being monetized one way or another?

Hermes :
I’m gonna regret wading in here, I know it.

geldonyetich :
I don’t like RMT, I think it violates the sanctity of a balanced game. It’s very much a “games as art” argument taken to its logical extreme.

I think this is fallacious. Wouldn’t a ‘balanced’ game have all the game’s tools and mechanics open to me after a reasonable period of time so that I can concentrate on building my skills with them? Most MMOGs don’t work that way and instead mete things out to you almost glacially.

I trouble with this is you’re basically saying that it’s okay to break what you can deem is already broken.

What’s actually happening is you’re taking what’s unbalance along one means and doing something unbalanced to try to correct it, only resulting in something exponentially less balanced than you started because now it’s breaking on two separate tangents:

Not only was the game something that arbitrarily forces a massive time investment to be rewarded, but now those rewards don’t need to be earned through play at all if you spend out-of-game assets (real money) to obtain them.

I’m not saying MMORPGs are perfect, but I’ll take imperfection over wantonly obliterated anyway.

Hermes :

geldonyetich :
Per usual, RMT remains a tax to those who are worldly enough to be employed but not worldly enough to realize that paying not to play the game in order to remain competitive in a largely artificial environment is largely a delusional gesture.

Or, and I’m just gonna throw this out here, maybe people play these games with groups of friends.

This is why many modern MMOGs provide a means for you to play with friends regardless of your character’s level or equipment.

Even without, I won’t sympathize with cheaters even if they feel peer pressure drove them to do it.

I just hope the RMTraders are itemizing their profits for their taxes. There’s a recession on, after all.