Talyn: You can use mounts in Northrend once you’ve finished the story. It is impossible to design a pathed storyline-heavy adventure if players can fly over everything that can serve as hooks or triggers for those adventures.

I’ll respectfully disagree. If you use a very broad definition of ‘real money trade/transfer/transactions,’ maybe it applies, ie. using real money to buy any sort of in-game perks.

But if we’re going to take things to such a broad extent, then we may as well say that we’re all engaging in RMT because we paid real money for a virtual product - the actual game in the first place.

And then hating on RMT becomes more than a little absurd, due to such a broad definition, doesn’t it?

I think my particular disgust with RMT comes from outside parties using the game as a venue to make money.

Real money exchanging hands between players, or third party gold/gear sellers for a profit. Usually as a way of gaining an in-game perk (be it performance or fluff, even.)

Making fluff tradeable, though, is an interesting middle ground. I recently wandered back into Guild Wars to see what had changed, and found this whole series of ‘miniature’ collectable pets. On the one hand, it disturbed me, because I suspected a lot of RMT went on behind the scenes in order for collectors to complete the collection. But since there was no inherent performance hit in not having a complete miniature collection, I just sighed and chalked it up to part of the game I wouldn’t ever experience in its entirety.

I don’t really oppose the game company itself looking for a venue to make more money. I accept it as ‘part of the game - we pay the company extra to gain whatever perks’ though I will vote with my feet and decide not to play the game if the cost of remaining competitive is unreasonable.

Flying mounts cost *what* in WoW? You expect the *normal* player to spend that much time being unproductive and just grind, grind, grind to afford one? Now with Northrend continuing the “no flying in Azeroth” theme, flying mounts have turned into extremely expensive fluff: only useful in the Outlands.

Wilz:

I see where the misunderstanding is coming from now. I’m not suggesting “RMT for Fluff” as a ‘cure’ for “RMT for Power” because as long as your game has currency or items, and said currency/items can be transferred, you will have people taking out of game shortcuts to get there. That’s inevitable. The only ‘cure’ for power RMT would be a currency-less, item-less, reward-less game and do we really want to go there?

What I’m saying is that not all of RMT has to be necessarily bad, and there are good applications for it that do not affect game performance, nor do they create power disparity between players.

RMT as a shortcut (to anything) is a problem in itself because it lets people skip the road as it was designed. What’s worse, it’s an out-of-game element that affects things in-game. However, when there is no road to speak of, there cannot be a shortcut by definition. In other words, and to tie it with the fluff example: If I put 10 fluff items in the game to be gained via questing, grinding, pvping, whathave you and then I turn around and I make the same 10 items available at my game store, yeah that’s Scroogy. Hell, it’s almost Clintonesque. I’m just asking for it.

But if those 10 items are only available via the game store, and there are no ways to acquire those items in-game otherwise, I’m not offering the chance for people to shortcut each other out of game.

Mind you, I’m not saying “Eliminate all fluff items from the crafting and loot tables. Let the fuckers eat our cake.” and make players “an offer they can’t refuse” if they want the items. Have as many fluff items available only via normal in-game means as you want. However, in addition to this, have a different set of items that’s only available via the game store. There is no conflict. We’re not offering the easy way out for the same items. We’re offering some items in game, some others at the store. As long as we’re not idiots with the items we sell, we’re not pointing a gun to anyone’s head. And by being idiots, I mean don’t put up super awesome spectramagiculous items for sale. No, just color, just fluff.

Another, almost stupid way of seeing this is: RMT will be implemented as default at some point. I think that’s borderline inevitable. However, do we want RMT where it matters, or where it doesn’t?

If the term is so problematic, then forget I said “RMT”. Pretend I never said it, and instead that I’m all about devs having game stores in which they sell all kinds of rubber duckies.

Genda:

This is not taxing roleplayers anymore than IKEA, for example, taxes furniture lovers (I’m not talking about IKEA’s markup ;) )

This is no barrier of entry for anything. It’s an option. It’s merely telling them “We have (x) number of fluff items you might like already available in the game via grinding rep/questing/raiding. However, if you don’t like that, we also have (y) number of *different* fluff items available at the store.”

At the end of the day, roleplayers are still players and players are still people (sometimes). If someone wants the fluff item that’s found as a boss loot drop and doesn’t want anything of what you have in the store, he will raid for it. If they want what you have in the store, and is not interested in anything that drops or gets from a quest, he will pay for it if he really wants it. If you want a rubber duckie, there’s no way I can sell you a mickey mouse.

The closest thing to taxing these roleplayers would be to eliminate every single fluff item they might conceivably want from all the loot tables and quest rewards and move them to the game store. That way you’re forcing them to come to you no matter what. But if you’re not a complete idiot and you’re doing this just to get some extra income and not nickel and dime your players to death, you will give them the option to get some fluff items normally, and keep different fluff items at the store.

I’ll be the first to admit that there’s a very fine line to walk, as observed during the Oblivion Horse Armor debacle, between what you include in-game and what you keep to sell later. People might be stupid sometimes, but most people catch on when you’re trying to gyp them. As in, “Wow, you’re charging me how much for a crappy horse re-skin that you could’ve included in-game from the get go? Piss off.” But that’s the balance of the thing. Not just a balance of price - how much should we charge for this little thing before it turns into a ripoff - but also a balance of availability - should we put this little thing in the game only or in the store only.

——–

In hindsight I probably shouldn’t have used the RMT acronym because it confused a lot of folks. But I also think if it quacks it’s a duck. Like I mentioned above, spending ten bucks at a gold selling site and spending ten bucks at the official game store to get a couple more alt slots are *both* RMT, whether we like it or not.

The fact that the acronym was hijacked in usage very early on to illustrate gold selling doesn’t mean it’s the only thing the acronym can comprehend.

Oh hey, look… it’s a can of worms! *opens the can of worms* …

… it’s kinda like guns. There are both legitimate and illegitimate uses for guns. Should we ban them outright just because of the illegitimate uses? I say no. I say combat the illegitimate uses as much as you can, while making sure the legitimate uses remain protected and thriving like any other human activity.

At the end of the day, devs will implement RMT. We really can’t tell them whether they should do it or not (we can, but that’s not the point). But we can tell them to put it in places where it doesn’t destroy the game.

Since you mentioned crafting, and since I just woke up and am not yet thinking straight (don’t ask) here’s a wacky idea (which *wipes eyes* I think is what yunk was saying in his final sentence?): what if the item shop only (or additionally) had an inventory of crafted items? If you have a master craftsmen, the item shop vendor could buy it for you and put it up for auction or flat-rate purchase. The item could *either* be purchased from another in-game character with in-game money *or* be purchased from the web version of the item shop for real cash. Either way, the buyer got the item he wanted and the crafter got the in-game money for his profession.

Yes, players want to consume the content and “beat” the game. That’s probably where the stupid stupid term “end game” came from. Personally I think level-based games contribute tremendously to that mindset; I’ve lost count of how many people who basically said “ok, I’m [insert level cap] guess I’m done,” and they either re-roll and do it again or they mean it — they’re done and they leave the game. In their minds or their understanding of the mechanics, they “beat” the game. But that’s a different topic… :p~