Attitudes to RMT

At State of Play V in Singapore, Joshua Fairfield and I had one of our regular arcane discussions about the various merits or otherwise of real-money trading (essentially, the conflict between financial capital and gaming capital in these environments).

That's not what this post is about.

What this post is about is our different perceptions of the extent of RMT in today's virtual worlds, in particular WoW.

In Josh's experience (Horde, PvP server), RMT was endemic, being treated by the players as little worse than driving 10% over the speed limit in real life. Sure, if you went 50% over the speed limit you'd expect to be punished, but if you were pulled up for being 10% over you'd feel aggrieved.

In my experience (Alliance, PvE server), RMT was rare, being treated by the players as the equivalent of driving 10% over the alcohol limit in real life. Even if you were 1% over the limit, you'd expect to be punished if caught.

Are we both right? Or are we both seeing what we want to see? Are game-style virtual worlds going through some kind of paradigm shift, in which RMT is regarded as part and parcel of playing them, or is resolve stiffening? Is what people say about RMT in public at odds with what they do in practice? What might their reasons be?

Remember, I'm not asking whether RMT is good or bad, I'm asking which way the tide is flowing (and, if you like, why).

Richard

Comments

[Shava Nerad/Shava Suntzu in SL]

I think you've implicitly pegged the difference -- for PvE environments, equipment is not a critical edge. If you don't have the best equipment, your progress is slower, perhaps, in leveling.

But in a PvP context, those at comparable levels are only differentiated by the statistical edge of equipment and sufficient consumables (potions,...) to get through a fight.

In PvP, also, you might have a completely separate set of gear if you know the kind of opponent you are facing (caster vs. tank, say) -- so you need more specialized, diversified sets of equipment.

As a result, you cheat^h^h^h^h^h^h buy up or you fail to thrive in a PvP game. So RMT will be tolerated as bad behavior, in the same way people "understand" that you have to be a bastard and gank the other guy in business or you'll "never get ahead."

Do you want to personally deprecate the terms of service, or do you want to be a sucker?

This is why my only PvP game, ever, was SWG, where I played a rebel trandoshan (female!) TKM/swords/scout. Every Thursday was PvP night with my guild, and we dueled like crazy, and it was crazy fun. But I nearly *never* PvP'd with my opposite numbers in non-dueling situations, because I don't like the whole emotional charge involved.

When I did, I kicked a reasonable amount of ass, but I really only loved Thurday fight nights.

[Luca Rossi]

As you said: you both saw what you wanted to see". Maybe it would be better say that "you both saw what you were allowed to see". It's nothing new that the way you perceive the game is shaped by the choice that you make before/in the game. And PVP / PVE server is a huge choice that's going to shape your perception of "what's the game about". Obviously it would shape even the perception of what is deviant or not (within the game obviously).

[unwesen]

I think the difference is larger than just PvP vs. PvE. All the people I know that have bought stuff for real money have either been in high-level raiding guilds, where competition is strong. All PvE players I know found high-level raiding to be too uncompetitive for their liking.

On the other hand, the one person I know on a Roleplaying server claims that there is very little RMT to be seen there, in comparison.

So there appears to be a difference in perception between PvP players and PvE players (and roleplayers).

But I don't think that's the issue, I think the underlying issue is the motivation with which you approach a game. If you wish to be the best, or in the first guild to down a new raid instance boss, you're more likely to apply all your resources (including real-life money) to achieve that goal. If you just want to spend some time with people and take in your surroundings, you don't have that need.

Having said that, if that's the reason behind different perceptions of RMT, then Blizzard are fueling the acceptance of the whole thing. On the whole they concentrate a lot more on providing content to end game players or PvP players, that is, the more competitive-thinking of the bunch.

Now that's all not terribly well thought out or argued, I suppose, but that's my perception of the matter.

P.S.: I realize that the sample size of "all I know" isn't necessarily representative. Still, you have to base observations on something.

[Douglas Thomas]

I think there is another complicating factor, which is that people engage in RMT for lots and lots of reasons and have various justifications accordingly.

I've talked to people on three different servers who bought gold (two PVP and one PVE) and I have found that the reasons range from needing extra money to pay repair costs from raiding during a week when they didn't have time to farm. They didn't see this as cheating at all, but almost as a necessity and actually as a consequence of bad game design.

One person thought it was OK to buy gold for their lvl 29 twink for the BGs, but not for their main, which was mostly the result of insane prices for "must have" twink gear in the 19/29/39 level range (plus enchants, this was back when you could do that).

Another person saw it as a straight time for money trade off. I work hard, I make good money and WoW is my relaxing time, so if I use it to cut some corners, who cares?

Others bought gold specifically for profession grinding (a number of people in fact) and, once again, blamed farmers, bad game design, bad enforcement, etc. The argument was the current situation made it necessary to buy gold to stay even with others (who either gained an advantage when things were easier or bought gold themselves).

Perhaps the most interesting part of it was that people had very strong opinions in that it was either perfectly fine and even part of the game or that it was morally bankrupt (which was a pretty widely held POV).

So, I guess all I am asking is this: Is it perhaps a more complicated and dynamic phenomenon then we are parsing? Maybe not, it just seems that it gets read culturally and socially in some interesting ways.

[Jack Volkhammer]

I've found that a lot players, particularly those that have played from the beginning, have relaxed their attitude toward RMT. They've done the grind. They've played the game as the developers intended. But now they're bored and annoyed with the grind. They want to play the aspects of the game that THEY enjoy.

For these players the liberation from the grind that RMT provides is probably the only thing that keeps them from cancelling their subscriptions altogether. It wouldn't surprise me a bit to find out that there's a correlation between the tenure of the subscription and the subscriber's attitude toward RMT.

@Jack:

That would certainly be my perception as well. I have continued to find that RMT-ers are high-functioning late-stage players, who are seeking to access final content. In addition, they tend to be high wage earners IRL with high opportunity costs for their time, as demonstrated by the decision to trade money for time.

So, are both Richard and I wrong? Is the right rule that people like *some* RMT, a little bit, but not rampant? And they like it to be private, not publicly declaimed?

If so, how in heck can we write rules that map to that desire? I posited in "the conversation" that this is in fact what game companies are doing: by banning only egregious offenders, they enable a certain segment of their market to stay in the game (those who work 60 hours a week, say), but can put the reins on things if they get out of hand. If so, isn't it interesting that the "no RMT" rule is actually being used to generate optimal levels of RMT.

That seems to map with both the state of affairs in games, AND to map with our general preference in the real world. We prefer to allow ourselves the freedom to do certain things, but ask that they be done behind closed doors.

I have been thinking a lot about this problem of the efficient level of RMT, and will post on it later, but this divide between public statements and private behavior is both what makes RMT so hard to measure (a poll asking "Do you like RMT?" is a terrible idea), and so fascinating.

[Joshua Fairfield]

The above post was me. "Name" for the win.

[Tim Howgego]

One aspect of trends in the WoW RMT market you are overlooking is "Learn2Play". So rather than buying gold, players buy the knowledge of how to make it themselves.

Paid subscription guides for MMOGs have been around for years. What's new is the degree of specialism, and the volume in which these are selling. For example, a typical WoW gold-making guide will contain a hundred pages just on the art of making money. As (effectively) a seller of such guides, I can confirm this is a real money-making business - one that pays the real-world rent for some of those involved.

While the Learn2Play market is still tiny by comparison to RMT, it is growing at a time when RMT has probably declined slightly. Examine the terms "wow gold making", "wow leveling guide", and "wow gold" on Google Trends, which records search volume over time. You'll find the first two increasing, while the last has declined somewhat in the last 12 months.

I think this trend partly reflects changing attitudes to RMT:

1. Fear. Growing worries of having accounts banned for interacting with gold farmers, as Blizzard becomes progressively more proactive against RMT.

2. Pragmatism. Why repeatedly spend money on one-off purchases, when you can just buy the ability to make your own gold, over and over again?

3. Being a good player. Generally knowing how to play the game, pushes you up the MMOG social ladder.

4. Ethics. Buying gold is dirty, like cheating "a little bit". But buying a guide is more like buying a book, or even an education - culturally very acceptable.

[Dmitri Williams]

We have a large survey data set on this topic. As soon as I can motivate Dan and Ted into action, we'll clear the data and share with the class. I hope to share both the % answer to this question (I can say that it's not one extreme or another) as well as what kinds of players and RL people lean which way.

If anyone wants to make bets or suggestions for where to dig, i.e. what kind of people lean which way, fire away.

FWIW, my experience mirrors Josh's, and my personal opinion mirrors Richard's.

I don't know if anyone caught the XFire debate last week in which several pointy-headed thinkers and devs and peddlers hashed the topic over:
http://www.xfire.com/cms/xf_debate_transcript7_main/

[Token]

So much text and none of you got it. It's all for epic mounts. Epic mounts are life or death on a PvP server.

[Elle Pollack]

@Jack:

Wheras, the standard anti-RMT cry seems to be from people who embrace the gospel of the grind, combined with a dose of old fasioned "No fair!". The usual line goes: "I had to work my butt off to get x item/all that gold/level 60. That guy got an unfair advantage because he had money to go out and buy it! ZOMG Banzors!"

I wonder...in Eve, there is a noticable animosity between PVP and PVE players; keeping in mind that Eve is designed for PVP, the dedicated PVE players get looked down upon. Opinion: perhaps for good reason, as the PVE play that does exist in EVE is repetitive, best taken in small doses and with groups or if one needs to stock up on cash, and it's hard to immagine how anyone could stand doing it as their main occupation in the game. Yet grind they do. Now I don't know much about the RMT situation in Eve except that those who provide the service - gold farmers and the marco strip miners - are generaly detested, but could PvP vs PvE have a consistant corelation with atatude torwards grinding and therefore atitude torwards RMT?

[Richard Bartle]

Josh>they tend to be high wage earners IRL with high opportunity costs for their time

Alternative interpretation: they tend to be high wage earners IRL because low wage earners can't afford to buy gold.

Being a high wage earner doesn't mean you spend more time working than a low wage earner: it means you get paid more than a low wage earner. A high wage earner has just as much time to spend playing as a low wage earner. They may indeed have less.

Richard

[Richard Bartle]

Token>So much text and none of you got it. It's all for epic mounts. Epic mounts are life or death on a PvP server.

So once you have your mount, you stop buying gold? In pre-BC days, paladins and warlocks never bought it? Nowadays, druids never do?

Richard

[Peter Clay]

I think the social perception is a bit like illegal drugs: banned but widespread, and lots of people doing it clandestinely. Bizarrely, I think this may actually be what the players want. It functions as a sort of sumptuary law: if someone's waving their bought wealth in your face, you can report them for it.

In the case of EVE, there is "game time card" RMT and there is goldfarmer RMT. The former is granted more legitimacy and people are seldom condemned for using it, because it's the CCP way to do things. It seems that people object to third parties making money out of the game.

[Wolfe]

The popularity of RMT activities is inversely proportional to the volume of punished RMTers, as well.

Look at it from a guild leaders perspective. When you finally sit there with 18 level 70 raiders and have with some help from unguilded friends been able to take down your first raid boss you will be unhappy about your Main Tank getting banned for selling eBay gold. This type of annoyances make community profiles paint RMT as bad to drive their people away from the activities.

Once the guild leaders know that anyone who sell gold can walk safe and keep on tanking their raids reliably the opinion shifts towards RMT being good, because it allows your Tank more time in game and less time stuck at work. (Or the RMT profits can be used to win dinner table arguments about playing habits which mitigate risk from parents or wives.)

In some games back in the old days my guilds often had to "manage the RMT business" generally by kicking anyone we could find who dabbled in it to avoid contaminating the guild with bannable offences. In WoW it seems like only RMT noobs get into any type of trouble and it appears to be a safe activity to the game population.

[Artheos]

I think in the end, it's about rationalization. The real driving factor comes in 2 parts:

1) Does the offender (let's not mince words here, it is cheating), know that engaging in RMT is cheating?
2) Does the offender care enough about his personal integrity (that which defines him when others aren't looking) to not cheat?

Everything else appears to be complex rationalization for violating the rules of the game.

Most people didn't carry monopoly money in their pockets when they went over to their friends house to play with them for an 'edge'.

[Wolfe]

In practice no one seems to care that other players "cheat". A player benefit greatly from a friends getting easy loot through eBay. Very few mmorpg's set me back just because other players advance, in theory I should feel the effect of eBay in a PvP scenario but in practice I dont. Moswtly because the thing players buy with their eBay trading is of minor consequence and still fails to come even close to gaining enough practical influence (such as increased DPS or HP) to matter.

The ceiling is always set by hardcore gamers who get their gear and skill from resources which fail to be available through eBay, even if everyone else buy their way up as far as they can they will still be minor pawns compared to the major players.

The stuff you can buy through RMT is even if very expensive not an influence on the part of the game players care about.

The things you need to become a major player in an mmo are things such as reliable friends, knowledge of mechanics, experience with control systems. These things are not sold through RMT. Even if RMT drives inflation it dosnt cause trouble for players unless it becomes a problem for the developers first.

[Jeremy Snyder]

OK, so ignoring all the understanding about the motivations for or against RMT, and just focusing on the question "Are game-style virtual worlds going through some kind of paradigm shift, in which RMT is regarded as part and parcel of playing them, or is resolve stiffening?"

My answer is that games are undergoing that shift, and RMT is becoming more prevalent. I won't say more accepted, but the simple fact is that the cat is out of the bag, in way. People know that there is RMT out there, and there are people who will, for whatever reason, choose to buy and sell. Plain and simple - RMT is increasing, as are the tools for it. Witness the number of new RMT platforms popping up and simple increase in the market size.

PS: I enjoyed watching the bit of this conversation that I could IRL in Singapore :-)

[Andy Havens]

Wolfe: "In practice no one seems to care that other players "cheat"."

Uh... I do. Maybe I'm the only one.

I played WoW predominantly on RP servers; some time on a PvE, but not enough to have experienced much RMT. My personal belief is that the only reason to play a multi-player RPG, as opposed to an excellent single player one like Morrowind, is because of the chance to interact with others. You either, a) play the game with other people (RP/PvE), or b) against other people (PvP), or some combo thereof.

On the RP server I played on, we had one fairly new member of our guild who had joined us at about level 20. This was a small guild (around 30) that were dedicated to in-game RP. You needed to write a background story for your character, for example. Not long... many of the kids put up just a paragraph or two, but that's fine. You just had to think of your character as someone who'd existed in-world before you rolled 'em.

So the new guy, an undead warlock, had really good gear for a level 20. This was less then three months after WoW debuted, so nobody thought much of it, until one of the other guildmembers asked him, "Where did you get XYZ piece." He told us that he'd bought it with gold that he'd purchased from some website.

We were universally appalled. You know us heavy-RP types; easily universally appalled.

When we told him he had to drop the stuff or leave the guild, he said, "But my character's background was of an undead who had previously been incredibly rich. I should have come out of the grave to an unlife of ease, and a ton of material stuff at my disposal, not the crap that you start with just because the game sets you up like that."

Which is a really interesting argument. Except that in most pen-and-paper RPs, we explained, you pay a penalty in other stats for choosing an advantage related to money. He'd never played a PnP game... so this was news to him. He said he'd drop the stuff, but another guild member said, "If his character was rich in before-game life, then he should have parceled out all gold among the guild upon joining."

We ended up asking him to foot the bill for our guild tabbard (which we were about to buy), and split the gold among other guildies. We told the rest of the guild about the situation, and we agreed that there would be no more RMT, even if it was RP/RMT.

The opinion of almost all of those I discussed the issue with (which was not many... maybe a dozen) was that RMT was fundamentally "wrong" for an RP environment, as it brought in stuff from outside the game. The point was made by one guildmate that the younger guys (being in college and having more free-time) essentially "brought in" their leisure time differential as opposed to us old, be-familied types; the whole, "John can play for 8 hours a day, I can play for 8 hours a week, but can afford RMT" argument.

The consensus among our guild was, essentially, "tough titty, kitty." You play the game to play the game. If you can play it more, you get more of everything; more XP, more stuff, more time with friends online, more cred among the people. If my RL doesn't let me do that, well that means my priorities are different, and me having more money shouldn't let me play as an "equal" to someone who puts the time in.

During the 8 months or so that I played WoW the heaviest (only ever reaching around level 40 with my main), we had at least a dozen new guys join as noobs and zip past me in just a couple weeks. I was the 2nd in command of the guild, and any respect I had from members had nothing to do with my level or gear, but with the interactions and creativity I brought to the guild. Frankly, because of the limited time I could spend in-game, I was probably in the bottom 25% in terms of fighting ability. But I was the one who'd come up with the guild "story," the website, did the most recruiting, etc. Because of that, if there was something I needed and couldn't afford, guildmates would often help me out. Yes, I used gold I hadn't earned through loot or craft... but I'd earned it through in-game relationship building; call it twinking if you like, but at least you have to earn it by not being a dick.

So... at least in my limited experience, on the RP server I used the most, the consensus was that RMT made it less fun, specifically because it took away chances for player-to-player interaction.

[thoreau]

Andy said, "The opinion of almost all of those I discussed the issue with (which was not many... maybe a dozen) was that RMT was fundamentally "wrong" for an RP environment, as it brought in stuff from outside the game."

I play EQ2 so I'm not sure about the WoW game mechanics, but is it possible to share coin between alts on the same server?

If so, you can have a high level alt with lots of coin. You roll a new toon on the same server and allow that toon to 'inherit' an amount of coin to make for an easier start.

My question is, can you RP a high level alt giving coin to a low level toon? Is this fundamentally different than RMT in the context of the backstory of the particular toon?

[Wolfe]

I know a lot of player do care about RMT as it does have a severe negative impact on several player styles, the problem is that "nobody seems to care" in the sense that nothing noticeable is being done to properly slow down the advance of the RMT activities.

The general trend is going towards a higher level of acceptance, I think this comes from the genral influx of players also coming from a more diverse background. About 8 years ago you had to work hard to find an mmorpg player in the western world who wasnt at least somewhat experienced as PnP RPG gaming.

Today the majority appears to lack this experience and instead coming from various aspects of networked computer gaming. (CS/SC/WC3...)
This "new breed" is not very concerned about the RP problems involved with RMT and their numbers are growing.

We oldskool players who import some aspects of roleplaying into playing WoW are not having a very loud voice anymore and no one listen when we claim RMT is undesired.

[Iris]

RMT in WoW has a much lower impact on individual players because of the way the game was designed. Having a lot of money to buy gear, while an advantage, means very little because much of the best gear cannot be bought with just money (instance/raid/arena stuff, bind-on-pickup, bind-on-equip), and there is a perpetual moneysink in terms of repair costs/food/water which are NPC-provided, funneling money out of the economy to prevent excessive inflation.

The only points at which RMT severely drive up market prices are for twink items due to the rarity vs demand. An average player can level and play just fine without being aware that RMT even exists, much less feel the need to participate, as normal progression provides plenty of resources. It is also inherent in the game design: if I want Rare Item X from Boss Y, I take a group of friends and get my own instance of Boss Y, rather than lining up to camp it in the wee hours of the morning hoping nobody else is on.

Compare this to games such as Everquest or Lineage 2, where most anything is buyable and there is fierce competition for high end items, and resources comparable to level are extremely difficult to acquire. You cannot possibly fail to notice the RMT and farmers in those games, since they practically run the economy. The prices for items necessary for progression are inflated to the point where legitimate players have very little chance of being competitive, and rare so that they would not even exist in any quantity without the farmers.

I think WoW players have it fairly easy, comparatively speaking, in that if they choose to ignore the RMT scene it does not severely intrude upon their gameplay unless they are concerned about the principles of the activity or "keeping up with the Joneses". Sometimes I think the amount of concern is overblown - if I have done my part in not contributing to the problem (ie, not buying gold), then enforcing the terms of their EULA upon those who do is Blizzard's responsibility, not mine. If Joe Random decides he has more free money than time and buys gold, it's not the province of any individual player to enforce that.

I admit to being somewhat mystified by the RP argument. My guildies ran my alt through some lowbie instances, and said alt now has extremely good gear for her level. Does that destroy "immersion"? Does it make a difference if I had looked for PuGs and farmed the same instance 20 times to get that gear? Does it even affect other players, provided I'm not using that gear to gank/grief them?

Having more material resources does not put you on an equal footing with the people who put more time into the game. There remain player reputation, relationships, real experience (not your exp bar), knowledge of how the game world works, etc, that cannot be easily bought. If I PuG with a level 70 who doesn't know, say, that Polymorph breaks on damage, I can be pretty certain he bought his toon, and will remember to not PuG with him in the future. In that regard the player community self-regulates, and the less a game is entirely material resource dependent the more of an impact that will make.

[Terence Chua]

I had the pleasure of meeting and talking quite extensively to Josh in Singapore, and while I listened in to one or two of his discussions with Richard, I didn't have the same honour of formally introducing myself.

But to the topic: I know people in both PvP and PvE environments who have bought gold, although the likelihood of buying gold — or time, in the case of getting someone else to power level or grind honor for you in battlegrounds — is slanted towards more PvP environments. Oddly enough, the ones who buy time don't seem to consider it as morally egregious as people who just buy gold. I suspect it's got to do with the disconnect between the player and the avatar, in the sense that it's okay since the avatar's working hard, even though it's being controlled by someone else.

Josh has a point in that while you get people decrying RMT, most don't seem to really care except for the spamming. Richard's comparison of RMT to speeding is interesting to me personally (as I'm a traffic court judge), and I think he's right there, too — like speeding, or drink driving, people have this Crowleyian attitude that "if it harm none, do what thou wilt"... just don't get caught. So in answer to Richard's question, I think the trend is heading towards realizing that you can't catch the gold buyers, or stop the gold farmers, just don't ask, don't tell.

I seriously doubt most people have actually thought about the effects on the in-game economy, which really, if the devs were really concerned about that most of all, it's not difficult to fix. As I noted once or twice to people during the conference, if you really wanted to stop RMT in gold (as opposed to time), all you have to do is make everything bind on pickup. There are knock on effects on gameplay, for example (especially the trading of mats for crafting, and auction houses would be defunct), but for the most part, that will stop people getting money for the sake of buying gear.

I have this feeling that it's only a matter of time before RMT is truly institutionalized in MMORPGs in one form or another, either by the developers doing it themselves or allowing third parties to do it.

[Lavant]

RMT Gift Giving

On his blog last November, Matt Milhaly asked the question about the difference between RMT and gift giving, both result of out of game factors, "why is [charitable exchange] acceptable when that out-of-game factor is friendship rather than money?" See post here. Despite fierce attempts to steer the conversation away from the usual EULA debate, seeking to explore the demand side of the equation: the practices of everyday gamers rather than Chinese professionals, his bloggers repeatedly came back to the EULA. However, it seems that by looking at "perceptions" towards RMT we are finally starting to delve into this interesting facet and I look forward to Dimitri's numbers (Although I believe anything too far below 30% as RMT user base will be a low estimate). How will RMT be measured first of all? What is RMT? Does charitable exchange cease to be RMT? The way in which the survey data is measured will be of concern. I am refering to references above and those transcripts found over at Xfire Debate. Yet moral perceptions of RMT is perhaps very relevant to the question I seek to explore here.

There is a clear rift in perception of moral capital: that resulting from the leveraging of material capital versus social capital. But what happens when material and social capital (across boundaries) are leveraged to gain material capital across boundaries? How is value created in and around games has been the fueling motivation behind my research here at UCI. It seems there is but one life remember, and I believe there is a quite fuzzy boundary that is not normally explored in these discussions.

A personal anecdote might help explain. Since I became a hardcore WoW researcher, I have found tremendously less time to "play" the game (at this point I really rather study the footage of old SoP debates than touch the grind with a ten foot poll). Some time back in May, I almost ceased playing entirely, but still needed access to the game for research purposes. Around the same time, a good friend became interested in playing, but not paying...a dime. Simply was not affordable and the subscription model conflicted with his sense of moral reciprocity. Very rational thinker mind you. A graduate in fact. Nonetheless, he decided to try my account one day, female human paladin, same PvP server. He became addicted (not in The Wall Street Journal sense of the word, but a much healthier fashion). As time passed he came to play more and more...and more (no surprise here). We had started to share an account. Please don't tell the account admin department ;) Nothing too interesting thus yet, but as time passed he quickly leveled and became quite a proficient farmer, enjoyed farming you might even say. At this point we came to a time share agreement: as I worked during the day he was free to use it during this time and after about 6pm, it would change hands, although I generally ended up differing that time allotment back to him. It seems as if we are sharing a summer getaway home, an escape from reality, maximizing gamer surplus. Efficient use of an entertainment medium. Parlaying value? Recently I received this letter in Wow stating: "I invested in a guy’s AH Endeavors and made 60 gold on my investment—no work involved. Pretty cool, huh?...Thanks to your being nice and letting me play a lot, I have accumulated a significant amount of gold that I would like to share with you, as I find the game more fun when I find all my items." Multiple levels of gift giving, RMT and reciprocity taking place here. We have social (friendship) leading to material (access to game) to social (investment in friend's AH speculation) to social (gift for sharing the account) to material (more gold for Lavant to buy rune cloth to quickly get Darnassus rep and explore the land on a frost saber mount---not the most efficient game method to reach exalted, but the most efficient given my adversity to the grind). So I ask Terra Nova, where is the line drawn between player run gift culture and RMT? Remember, NO FARMERS involved in this question. Assume them away for a moment. It seems the subscription model is a dying means of payment, at least in dollar form...

[Lavant]

Matt- Sorry bout that...should read "Matt Mihaly"

[T.D. Risk]

@Iris

While it is true that the better items in WoW cannot be bought, RMT gold can act as a lever in attaining those items. The player who raids twice a week, spending a day farming gold and supplies, can simply purchase his maintenance needs with that meta-influx of gold. He can now raid three times a week and gain that much more of the better items. The advantage to PvP competitors is similar.

To Richard's question, from my anectdotal experience I'd say yes, the tide is inexorably flowing towards RMT acceptance in MMOGs. From EQ, through half a dozen others, to WoW I've always been in the same kinds of RP-oriented guilds (more "immersionist" than strict RP, really). In EQ RMT was literally unthinkable and twinking was rare, only grudgingly allowed if the player came up with in-game justifications. By the time WoW came out twinking was unremarked and RMT was "don't ask, don't tell". Only one player was ever blatant enough to get kicked from the guild, and he would have probably gotten off a lot easier if the guild leader hadn't been a Blizzard employee who took the EULA seriously (he wanted to keep his job).

Same kind of "RP" guilds, often the same people, travelling down a slippery slope. Arriving at the bottom is inevitable.

I can't leave this without giving my personal opinion on RMT. I'll leave out the ethical considerations. My sensibilities were honed by 12 years of strict RP MUD playing prior to EQ. Perma-bans were regularly given to players who got caught "merely" twinking (gift-giving without in-game "RP" justification) in those MUDs. The attitudes of players who willingly played under those rules were different from those of today's MMOG players. It's a changed game atmosphere due to the progressive erosion of the in-game/out-of-game barrier.

I haven't played a MMOG since quitting WoW 18 months ago and I suspect I won't ever again. Not just because of RMT, but because of the player (and developer) attitude shift that has resulted in RMT as well as voice chat and other immersion-breaking intrusions. The magic has gone away.

[Hellinar]

@Thoreau. In the RP style I favor twinking and RMT would be vastly different. A big component in RP for me is looking at the word from the characters point of view. In the “twinking” case, you old dwarf buddy Hedrik Stoutarm gives a few decent weapons to a friends son to start him on his way. You know Stoutarm, and its just the kind of thing he would do.

In the second case, some elf turns up in fancy gear, claiming to have “inherited” much gold from a family you have never heard of, and doubt even exists. Knowing there are some dubious ways to gain gold in this world, who would you choose to adventure with, the son or the elf?

In the twinking case, you have seen, and helped, Stoutarm come by the gold honestly. In this second, there is no inworld history to support the heap of gold. If, like me, you RP to create a story, these are as different as a full glass and an empty glass.

[Richard Bartle]

Wolfe>In practice no one seems to care that other players "cheat".

Well, that was kind of the question for this post. On my server (Alliance, PvE) people do care about it. Your experience seems to be otherwise. The question I was asking was whether the perception depends on whom you're gaming with, and to what extent. It's when people make blanket statements like yours that are at odds with the experience of other players that lead to my posting on the subject.

Richard

[Richard Bartle]

Terence Chua>So in answer to Richard's question, I think the trend is heading towards realizing that you can't catch the gold buyers, or stop the gold farmers, just don't ask, don't tell.

Actually, they CAN do something about stopping it.

Suppose that in order for one character to give anything to another character, they have to be in the same guild for 2 weeks. This would cut RMT to negligible levels at a stroke.

As you were part of the conversation Josh and I were having, you'd have heard that part of Josh's complaints about attitudes to RMT was that the developers condone it (he suspects for money reasons, but I'm not that cynical).

That's another discussion, though...

Richard

[lewy]

@Richard Bartle:

The problem is that the measures required to prevent RMT in game would be a significant impediment to normal play. A while back I told a friend that I had a fool proof solution to gun crime in the United States. Set up a universal curfew of 10 pm and require citizens to have a special government permit to be out after that time. Ban all travel more than 50 miles away from your home without special government dispensation.

The problem is that everyone knows how to stop RMT (or real life crime). The trick is that nobody particularly wants to live in the kind of society where crime or RMT is impossible. If I have a level 70 with a couple of thousand gold and my brother-in-law, or a college buddy I haven't spoken to in years, decides he wants to play should I be able to give him a thousand gold to help him get started? And if the answer is yes and you still want to combat RMT in game how do you differentiate between my transfer of a thousand gold to a new character and that of a Chinese gold farmer's?

[lewy]

One more thing: this whole discussion relies on anecdotal evidence, and I think the consensus is that that is generally worthless. On the other hand we know that RMT is a huge industry involving millions or even billions of dollars and that it employs literally hundreds of thousands of individuals. That alone it seems to me is ample indication that it is a widespread phenomenon and for that reason alone probably has reached a level of significant acceptance among the MMOG player base.

[Iris]

@T.D. Risk

Yes, the players who buy gold won't have to deal with farming for maintenance costs, but what I was arguing for was that it does not really affect other players that much, unless you are talking about global pvp. The gold buyer still needs to spend the same amount of time raiding as other players, and would still need to be a competent player. The way that the raids are set up in WoW at the moment, a bad player, no matter how good his gear is, is a liability rather than an asset in a raid group, whereas a good player in slightly subpar gear would do a better job.

It's this balance between gear and actual technical skill (or at least knowledge of the game) which I believe affects the rate of RMT, because the former is buyable and the latter is not. Also, the game is designed to be of reasonable difficulty at all levels (not just endgame) with gear normally acquirable without engaging in RMT. In, say, Lineage 2, if you do not have the money to buy top grade gear for your level, you're stuck grinding mobs 10 levels below and will take about 5 times longer to progress as someone who does (said mobs will also have lower item drop rates, leading to less money, leading to a cycle of being perpetually gimped).

@lewy

I think part of it is that it's bad PR to ban the buyers instead of the sellers. I could never get all that riled up against the gold farmers themselves because to them it's just a job. It's the people who are creating demand, the end users, who are causing this problem, but the game companies are unwilling to penalize them because these are the same people who are paying their subscription fees. As a NY Times article quoted, if you ban the end users, these are the same people who're going to get angry, stop paying, and say nasty things about your company and your game, whereas banning farmers rarely leads to such consequences.

[Richard Bartle]

lewy>The problem is that the measures required to prevent RMT in game would be a significant impediment to normal play.

Well, they would be if RMT was part of "normal play". If they're not, well it depends what you mean by "significant". Back in the day, the idea of soulbound objects was considered a significant impediment to normal play, but nowadays people think it's just part and parcel of the game.

>A while back I told a friend that I had a fool proof solution to gun crime in the United States. Set up a universal curfew of 10 pm and require citizens to have a special government permit to be out after that time.

That's not foolproof at all - people could go out after 10pm and shoot each other just as they do now.

You could perhaps reduce the incidence of gun crime in that manner, but then there are other ways to do it, too. Here in the UK, gun ownership without a licence is prohibited, and as a result we get far fewer shootings than in the USA. If you don't want to ban guns, OK, make bullets cost $10 each. If you don't want that, well, what you're basically saying is that you want people to be allowed to shoot guns so much that you accept the level of gun crime which comes with it.

I agree with your basic point, though. With RMT, it's a similar situation: how much do you want to screw up the game world in order to avoid a few other people screwing it up even more? And if you let the screwers-up continue to screw up for long enough, how long before it becomes part of the regular culture instead of something aberrant?

>nobody particularly wants to live in the kind of society where crime or RMT is impossible.

Well no, they DO want that, they just don't want that plus whatever it took to get the virtual world that way. That said, today's virtual worlds are almost fascist dictatorships in comparison with the early ones, with heavy regulation implemented in software. You can't steal anything from another player, you can't attack them at random, you can't push them off cliffs... Yet today's players seem to accept that, and indeed to like it. Who is to say that if you didn't take a simple anti-RMT measure (such as only allowing one-to-one trade with people who have been in the same guild as you for 2 weeks) then they might not like it? It would certainly make guilds stronger.

>If I have a level 70 with a couple of thousand gold and my brother-in-law, or a college buddy I haven't spoken to in years, decides he wants to play should I be able to give him a thousand gold to help him get started?

Well that depends on the virtual world's anti-twink policy. Surely he could wait 2 weeks before getting the money, though?

Richard

[Wolfe]

The people who openly complain about RMT are in large the ones with the lowest powers in the political scene around the game.

The developers who are the highest in power only appear to pay token service to these complaints (even it they try to act it has no noticeable effect). The practical effect of the developers intervention is non existant, hence it becomes part of the game over time.

[lewy]

Richard Bartle wrote:

>Well, they would be if RMT was part of "normal play". If they're not, well it depends what you mean by "significant". Back in the day, the idea of soulbound objects was considered a significant impediment to normal play, but nowadays people think it's just part and parcel of the game.

You could also ban all trades whatsoever and make everything bind on pickup, or make a completely skill based game where loot is worthless.

> That's not foolproof at all - people could go out after 10pm and shoot each other just as they do now.

Assuming zero enforcement, certainly. I was envisioning a program where being out after 10 pm is grounds for the police to pull someone over and question them and an aggressive program in place where the police to do just that. I would also imagine that the police could scan your license plate as you drive past them on the highway and pull you over if you're more than 50 miles away from your house to make sure that your government travel permit was correct. I don't imagine that I'd feel very comfortable living in such a society. Is hanging around in a virtual world where big brother is constantly monitoring you going to be very pleasant? I don't think that it would be fun enough to justify a monthly fee.

> Here in the UK, gun ownership without a licence is prohibited, and as a result we get far fewer shootings than in the USA.

On the other hand assault and burglary are also illegal in the UK and yet the rates for those two crimes are lower in the US. Also, the number of non-gun homicides in the US is much higher than the the total number of all forms of homicide in the UK, so I'd suggest it has more to do with different cultures rather than crime legislation.

> If you don't want to ban guns, OK, make bullets cost $10 each.

That only prevents a hypothetical criminal from practicing with his weapon, not using it.

Also, banning liquor in the 1920's only created Al Capone. Organized crime in the U.S. has a lucrative business running in cigarettes from Mexico to beat high tobacco taxes. And there's the whole drug war thing. Banning a product for which there is a sizable demand only creates a sizable black market--which is precisely what's happened with RMT.

> You can't steal anything from another player, you can't attack them at random, you can't push them off cliffs...

That depends on which game you're playing. In certain games you can.

> Who is to say that if you didn't take a simple anti-RMT measure (such as only allowing one-to-one trade with people who have been in the same guild as you for 2 weeks) then they might not like it?

At the cost of severely penalizing loners. Imagine an individual who lucks into a purple on a raid who would like to sell it to raise money for his mount. Now he has to go through at least a two week process to do so, and the individual who would like to purchase that item has to go through the trouble of inconveniencing his guild by inviting a total stranger into their midst. Now imagine that this hypothetical buyer is unscrupulous. He could say something like "You're going to sell me that item for 200 gold less than we agreed upon, or you can go find someone else and wait for another two weeks."

>It would certainly make guilds stronger.

Or it might make guilds much weaker. Imagine a "merchant's guild" made up of thousands of strangers with no affiliation with other another, whose only reason for joining that guild was to be able to trade with one another.

>Well that depends on the virtual world's anti-twink policy. Surely he could wait 2 weeks before getting the money, though?

That's assuming that he's going to join my guild. What if he wants to play with the guys from his workplace?

Also, does it make sense to have an anti-RMT policy but no anti-twink policy?

[lewy]

@Iris:

Yes, and that's why the current state of anti-RMT enforcement is a joke. If all of the risk falls on the seller rather than the buyer that basically guarantees that there will always be a demand.

[Hellinar]

>how do you differentiate between my transfer of a thousand gold to a new character and that of a Chinese gold farmer's? <

One big difference is motive. You acquired your gold in normal gameplay and now want to give it away. The Chinese farmer acquired it because the amount of gold he acquires in an hour is worth more in US$ than working in a factory. The RMT trade, like any trade, is driven by comparative advantage. In the case of RMT, it is driven by the differential between the average gold earnings per month of the average player, and the earning potential of an optimized farming account.

Soft cap the max amount per month an account can earn to a small multiple of the earnings of an average max level player. By definition, this would not affect the earnings of the average player. But it would severely drop the efficiency of the farming account, and make most current RMT trades uneconomic. Reduce the comparative advantage. Blizzard is actually trying this in a less efficient backwards direction. Daily quests are upping the average earnings of the average player, closing the gap a bit on the farming account earnings. I think capping the farming accounts would have a more positive effect though.

[robusticus]

My anectodal perception is that a small percentage of players indulge heavily and an equal percentage passionately view it as cheating. The rest of us don't care, falling somewhere in the middle between a mild dislike and buying gold rarely.

Again, Bind-on-pickup is quite possibly the worst game design method ever. Followed closely by p-random drops where the server falls into von Neuman's trap or the client gets hacked.

Bind-on-pickup could be valid for lore reasons, such as for a few sentient weapons. But as a general anti-inflation device? That's cheesy like Monday morning.

Players tend to talk about "earning" stuff, but the irony is that wasn't the intention, far from it. Were it the intention one would unlock the right to trade by being present for a kill. So if I've downed Lady Vashj once, I would have the right to buy the Glorious Gauntlets of Crestfall, and everything else in her loot table, dropped during somebody else's raid. Such a system should satisfy the achievers, but it wouldn't. They would cry hard at such a change, and would in fact mock me viciously for even thinking about it.

So that's not the way it works. There is no earning, only a twisted facsimile of the concept, at least not in the game you're talking about here. And so you have the endless controversy.

[lewy]

Hellinar wrote:

> One big difference is motive.

Yes, but my point is that from a technical perspective motive is useless. All the server knows is that gold is being transferred from character A to character B. How can it possibly discern the "why" behind that?

> Soft cap the max amount per month an account can earn to a small multiple of the earnings of an average max level player.

That only forces the farmers to deploy a group of toons, rather than simply relying on one.

I don't think RMT is "solvable" given the setup of a game like WoW, and I think the fixes that have been discussed will only end up inconveniencing legitimate players while the farmers find loopholes.

The salient point is that holds true for "a game like WoW". I don't imagine there would be much RMT in a superhero game. There powers are integral to the character--it doesn't make sense in the context of the setting to be buying and trading super powers. I can also envision an elves-in-tights game where there is no magic loot, just ordinary swords and armor which are lost on death but easily reacquired. Obviously it's possible to design around RMT, but clearly it's too late for WoW.

[Amarilla]

@lewy : except for the case when Blizzard consider the " official RMT " a possible future option.

[Richard Bartle]

lewy>You could also ban all trades whatsoever and make everything bind on pickup, or make a completely skill based game where loot is worthless.

You could, yes. There are many ways to undermine RMT, and some would indeed be unpalatable to today's players (just as things like BoP would have been unpalatable to the players of 20 years ago). The one I suggested isn't all that hard to implement, doesn't have an intolerable effect on gameplay, yet would curtail RMT fairly effectively.

>Banning a product for which there is a sizable demand only creates a sizable black market--which is precisely what's happened with RMT.

Yes, but if you remove a ban then the take-up will generally increase, and then you get the social problems that led to the ban's being imposed in the first place.

>Imagine an individual who lucks into a purple on a raid who would like to sell it to raise money for his mount. Now he has to go through at least a two week process to do so

No, he just has to put it on the auction house. The AH mechanism would need to be able to accommodate this, though. Basically, the way that WoW works at the moment you could put a scrap of leather and the farmer would bid 500G for it (the 500G you bought from them). The system would have to be changed so that if there were identical objects for sale then the buyer would get the one offered at the lowest price. So, someone else puts up a scrap of leather for 3SP and that's the one the farmer gets (for 3SP) rather than the 500G one. Instant buyout would have to be on a (random) timer, too, to give other people a chance to step in with a lower price tag.

Yes, these things are always a little more complicated than the headline makes out...

>Or it might make guilds much weaker. Imagine a "merchant's guild" made up of thousands of strangers with no affiliation with other another, whose only reason for joining that guild was to be able to trade with one another.

The very fact that it's different to normal guilds makes it an attractive idea, to me at least.

>Also, does it make sense to have an anti-RMT policy but no anti-twink policy?

Sometimes, yes. There are people who don't like RMT but who don't mind twinking - the two aren't always equated.

Richard

[Isaac]

I wonder whether complete and total enforcement is necessary, especially considering that perfect enforcement is, under some analytical perspectives, infinitely costly. I would agree that given Blizzard's massive account eliminiations back in mid to late 2006 and the current vigilance they are showing, RMT is not a really big issue anymore. If you are competitive enough that you have to purchase RMT just to keep up with others, either in high level raiding or PvP, I would say that puts you in a very small bracket of l33t players who make up a niche market, the variations of which do not have a strong multiplier effect in the wider economy.

Certainly Blizzard has no incentive to fully eliminate RMT, not only because doing so would be costly but because there are probably a set of subscribers that only continue playing because they can make regular purchases of RMT without interference. As long as the level of RMT supply is not moving upward, and so long as there is not a great deal of volatility in the supply, prices will be stable and the existence of RMT will go basically unnoticed (so long as purchasers keep their mouths shut :), and its "negative externalities" will be minimal.

[robusticus]

Any plan that involves strengthening guilds should be ruled out. People don't necessarily want to be in a guild. Being in a guild shouldn't ever be a game requirement, it should be about who you want to play with, if anybody.

[thoreau]

Isn't in-game gold a fiat currency? Does any MMO bind its gold to some in-game resource?

I wonder if gold farming would go away if the amount of gold in circulation was capped based on some metric.

To handle item farming, make looted items a 'one time only' enterprise. That is to say, if you loot a Scaled Red Dragon Sword once, you can never loot that item again. If you sell it ok, but you'll never loot it again.

[lewy]

Richard Bartle wrote:

> Yes, but if you remove a ban then the take-up will generally increase, and then you get the social problems that led to the ban's being imposed in the first place.

Clearly though for some bans the cure is worse than the disease--the problems with prohibition the U.S. went through in 1920's, for example. Given the hoops we're jumping through trying to get an RMT solution in place, is it really worth it? It's extremely unlikely in my view that any solution can simply be dropped into place. It's more likely that there will be an arms race between developers and farmers which requires constant tweaking. And all of this of course represents time and resources stolen away from developers who could be working on fixing bugs and publishing new content.

> No, he just has to put it on the auction house. The AH mechanism would need to be able to accommodate this, though. Basically, the way that WoW works at the moment you could put a scrap of leather and the farmer would bid 500G for it (the 500G you bought from them). The system would have to be changed so that if there were identical objects for sale then the buyer would get the one offered at the lowest price. So, someone else puts up a scrap of leather for 3SP and that's the one the farmer gets (for 3SP) rather than the 500G one. Instant buyout would have to be on a (random) timer, too, to give other people a chance to step in with a lower price tag.

In other words, more hoops to jump through. Why can't your hypothetical farmer buy up the only yellow power crystal on the auction house? After that, seeing as there are no other yellow power crystals for sale, wouldn't your buyer be able to auction his yellow power crystal for 5000 gold?

And there is still the hypothetical where you want to gift 1000 gold to someone who is not in your guild...

> There are people who don't like RMT but who don't mind twinking - the two aren't always equated.

In other words, if I get 1000 gold from a friend for twinking purposes that's fine but if I purchase 1000 gold from a farmer it's not?

[Hellinar]

lewy>In other words, if I get 1000 gold from a friend for twinking purposes that's fine but if I purchase 1000 gold from a farmer it's not?<

Right. There is a huge difference, which seems “obvious” to me. Its relates to how the actions scale. Sure, at a one transaction level they look the same. But that is not the issue. RMT is a system level problem, not an individual morality one. While you might give 1000 gold to a friend for twinking purposes, you are not likely to give 1000 gold to 500 of your closest friends for twinking purposes. The farmer on the other hand, needs to give his 1000 gold to 500 strangers to make his business viable. It is this scale issue that gives RMT its negative system effects. Twinkers don’t usually farm 24/7 on multiple accounts, thus inflating the economy and increasing the grind. Twinkers deal with known friends, farmers deal with strangers, and have to resort to spamming thecommunication channels to contact them. At a close up single transaction level, the 1000 gold transfer may look the same, but pull back to an overall system level, and they look very different.

One dividing line in attitudes to RMT I think is whether people look at the implications on a personal level, or on a system level. The two viewpoints give different results. I think the early VW attempts tended to attract people prone to system level thinking, and were nervous of the system effects of RMT on features they loved. As VWs get more mainstream, they are moving more to the consumerist viewpoint of “what does it mean to me right now”. Long term system level effects are something you pay the provider to worry about.

[lewy]

@Hellinar:

So would RMT be acceptable if it was constrained to a frequency approaching normal twinking? Let's say gold in game is prohibitively expensive in terms of real dollars, meaning that RMT for gold is extremely rare--but it does occur. Would you still have an objection if someone bought gold if it's an act of such rarity as to have little to no consequence on the game at large?

One more thought: twinkers do harm the economy for lower level characters. If I have to grind for 10 hours to get the materials to make a suit of plate, what effect will it have when a level 70 can round up the materials/gold in 30 minutes? Even worse, what if said level 70 gifts those materials or the plate to his lower level buddy? Now said buddy isn't going to be patronizing the wares of level 20 crafters, like me. Level 70's will inevitably ruin the market for level 20's for no other reason than the mobs they kill drop more gold: one hour of grinding for a level 70 may result in gains an order of magnitude larger than what a level 20 could make in the same amount of time.

[lew]

Whoops, one more thing. I may be unlikely to give out 1000 gold to 500 of my closest friends, but surely there are 500 people just like me who are are twinking their friends in the game.