The Early History of Real Money Trades

A while back, Peter Edelmann wrote to us about the early days of Real Money Trades (“RMT”). He said:

“I came across this in one Mark Wallace's Escapist pieces:

"Out-of-world sales of gold and other virtual items have been going on since the early days of text-based "multi-user dungeons" and other online spaces, in the late 1970s."

Which got me to thinking about the earliest documented cases of RMT. The late 70's seems a little early - and it would seem widespread external markets didn't emerge until Ultima Online (post 1997/98). I wouldn't be surprised if there was some informal RMT taking place much earlier - possibly even the mid-1980s (like in Habitat or the GEnie worlds) - but I haven't seen any documented cases. Any thoughts about this?”

Well we thought that it was a perfect question to ask our resident gurus who were there at the beginning of this thing and who are responsible for much of what we take for granted in MMOGs and VW design. So we decided to have a fireside chat with our very own Richard Bartle and Jessica Mulligan. For those who don’t know them, Jessica and Richard claim to be extra-terrestrials from the far future, sent to our Earth to interfere with the timeline and prevent the galaxy-wide RMT wars of the 39th century. However Richard is best know for programming the world’s first multi-user dungeon—MUD1—with Roy Trubshaw between 1978 and 1981. Jessica’s worked on numerous online games including the original NeverWinter Nights on AOL, Warcraft II Online, and Ultima Online. We grabbed them on their way back from holidaying at Richard Branson’s private island.

Terra Nova: Thanks for chatting with us. Nice tans. So, has RMT really been going since the early days of text-based MUDs?
Jessica Mulligan: Since the first MUD didn't even go live until 1978-79, that may be a bit too early. After MUD1 went up on British Telecom in 1984, there may have been some item sales, but I rather doubt it; the game reset every 180 minutes, so any sale would have lasted 3 hours, tops. More likely, a character that had achieved Wiz or Witch would be sold, except that players that reached that level were very jealous of the status. I don't know that someone who hadn't earned it would have been allowed to hang out.
Richard Bartle: RMT was highly uncommon in MUD1. The game reset periodically, so there was no point in buying objects as they wouldn't survive the reset. I know of one case where someone bought a wizard character, but that would be the late 1980s, not the late 1970s; the character was obliterated when the sale was detected, anyway, as it was only a half-assed thing. The guy wanted a wiz, someone else was about to lose his modem or computer or whatever, and so he sold it to him it. But they both knew it was only a matter of time before what had transpired would be detected and the character would be zapped to oblivion.

Oddly, the very earliest occasions where people powerlevelled other players' characters were not about money. Men did it for women in the hope or expectation of some kind of emotional or physical relationship. There's an example of it mentioned in "The Cybergypsies", I think, where one player spends all hours building up a wiz for a woman, when it's obvious she's just using him. He left the character just short of reaching wiz, so she could do the final step herself, yet she told him to do it—not because she couldn't do it, but to put him in his place as her thrall.

Terra Nova: When did you first notice RMT?
Richard: The first sales I know of for sure were in the game Shades. There was quite a scandal when it broke. Again, it was character sales rather than object sales, but there was also an "I will play your character to wizard level" scheme available. I'd guess this was about 1987, plus or minus a year. There's a reference to a Shades-related incident in "The Cybergypsies", which provides some more details but it’s hazy as to the date. I think that 1987 is probably about right.
Jessica: I directly experienced my first case in March, 1989, in GS II on GEnie; a player sold his character for $2,000 US. At the time, it was an enormous sum. I found out later that character and item sales had been going on for about a year before that. Character and item sales were pretty common on GEnie (GS II and GS III, Dragon's Gate, Stellar Emperor) and CiS (British Legends) and AOL (Club Caribe, GS III, Dragon's Gate, NeverWinter Nights) from 1989 through about 1994. Richard could probably tell you if it was common in British Legends on CiS in the early-mid 1980s, but that was a version of MUD1 and also featured resets. I suspect planet sales were rampant in MegaWars III on CiS from 1983 to 1992; they certainly were in Stellar Emperor on GEnie from 1986-1994, and that was just MegaWars with the serial numbers filed off.

Terra Nova: What sort of scale are we talking about for RMT in the 80s?
Richard: It wasn't rife. Even twinking wasn't rife, because the wizzes would jump on anyone who they suspected of doing it. Because we had a much higher admin/player ratio than is possible in today's vast worlds, we could ensure that people didn't do anything that we felt sullied the game. It was important that the only people who got to wiz were those who deserved to be wizzes, and wizzes were therefore jealous of their status. If they saw someone cheating (and anything like this would have been regarded as cheating) then they were swift to react. Most virtual worlds of that era were the same; as far as I know, only Shades had what we'd now call RMT incidents, and although I'm sure a lot of it went on in secret, it would still be nowhere near the levels we see today in even the "cleanest" large-scale commercial worlds. Whether this is because it was harder for people to find a marketplace in the olde days I don't know; Shades had tens of thousands of players, so I don't think there was a critical mass issue.

Terra Nova: Did this strike you as strange at the time, that people would pay money to play the game for them? And did you take any steps to change the design of games to account for this?
Richard: We did consider that people would do it in MUD1, but laughed it off; what kind of idiot would buy something that would only last until the end of a reset? It would be like buying a sandcastle built below the tideline! We knew people could play one another's characters, and if they were up front about it we didn't mind all that much so long as they played roughly equally (or if one played substantially more than the other, that person alone got the wiz). We didn't program in anything to prevent people from getting/paying their friends to make wiz for them, though, we simply banned the practice and FODded anyone we found engaged in it. Customer service is SO much easier when you can do that!

Terra Nova: Were you surprised when eBaying took off in a big way, in games like Ultima and Everquest?
Richard: I was disappointed more than surprised. I knew it could happen, I'd hoped it wouldn't happen, and I'd hoped the developers would have put up a more spirited defence. It wasn't to be, though. They set the precedent, and now we're all having to live with it whether we want to or not.

Comments

[Dan S]

1.

There was some light RMT in Island of Kesmai on CIS in the same time frame as the Megawars III stuff too. My memory recalls something, but whether it was characters or drake potions, "dps" (stat enhancing potions) and youth potions (or all the above), I don't recall. One player of many characters (more than my eight!) was the most commonly suspected buyer. Because experience could be transferred by killing another character, some exiting players would turn over their characters to those who remained (and at times cash was reputed to change hands) and they would be "drained" before being deleted. I was the beneficiary of a bit of this (though on a free basis) myself.

Because the game cost $6 (and some paid $16 earlier on when playing at higher baud rates) per hour for CIS connection, $1000 for a character with a lot of experience could be a real bargain. You were gonna more than pay that in connection costs to earn the exp you could siphon off in minutes with repeated killing and rezzing.

[K Maxson]

2.

Nobody ever remembers this, but in the late 70s and particularly the early 80s on the original PLATO system developed by Don Bitzer at UIUC's CERL, multiplayer dungeoncrawls such as Avatar and Oubliette saw items and characters changing hands for money. As a matter of fact, almost all of the non-PVP-related issues everyone natters on about regarding WoW today were issues with Avatar back before Bina & Andreesen pounded out Mosaic next door to CERL. Avatar was available nationwide (wherever there was a PLATO system :-), supported a MASSIVE number of 40 simultaneous players (up to 200 as time went on), and saw griefing, player weddings, real-live vendettas developing from in-game activity, player clans, the occasional corrupt game operator, maaany lowered university GPAs, etc.

[Richard Bartle]

3.

Dan S>There was some light RMT in Island of Kesmai on CIS in the same time frame as the Megawars III stuff too.

That doesn't surprise me at all. Indeed, vague memories are stirring as to its having been mentioned to me at the time. I don't know what the year would be, but it would be somewhere around 1987, too.

Richard

[Starhawk]

4.

I don't recall planet ever being bought or sold in MW3 probably because given the 4 week turnover by the time your planet got really big it was almost time for reset.

If the universe had been more persistent I am sure it would have happened of course our way of transfering planets was just to roll some Dreadnoughts in and pound it to dust which at $6per hour could become costly but was a lot of fun at least for the pounders.

[Liberator]

5.

In all my years in MW3 I never heard of a planet being sold. And I even ran the forum for a bit after Gill. And the similarities to Genie’s SE were cosmetic. Planet PMing and combat worked completely different there. As did strategy. The real issue with real $ was mules. Folks would go off and get a few extra CompuServe accounts, a few extra phone lines and a few extra computers. Then get a front end and scout the whole galaxy in the first night. Later use those same multiple accounts to take or burn a planet in a matter of hours or even minutes. Planets came and went too easily in MW3 to be sold in the real world. Folks who had the $ and wanted to win would pay for mules and use them. Two or three accounts running all night and some time during the day at $6 an hour running figs back and forth for the duration of the war? That’s how you “purchased” a planet. $1000 was nothing. And Starhawk's correct. It was more fun, especially for the pounders.

[Arachnid]

6.

Theres no way planets were sold in MW3. In the early days of MW3, the game was so dominated by the Kesmai staff itself (Dorsai! Templars, Killer Rabbits, etc.) that they killed their own game, right at a time when CS was actually advertising it. They sat on the IMPS shooting any newb trying to get out, and they not only 'unested' any planets that they found every day, but they also would drain it deleting mets, high taxes, and the population would riot and it would shrink down to nothing. Because time was the issue, it would not be much use that war. I know, I tried reviving one thinking they wouldnt come back. (They did)

The JRB's didn't IMP sit as much, but, they too, were so efficient that planets est'd by anybody would not likely make it until morning. Any planet over 50% hab was going to be looked at every day, as I recall, so the winning team was winning from day one and never needed to 'buy' a planet, they would just bust it, which was part of the fun, anyway.

The first war that was even enjoyable and actually played as advertised I think was Spectrum vs HK, and that was in mid or late '80s and both teams were basically even.