Reality of RMT

[Asriah]

I see threads pop up from time to time complaining about bots or unusual prices on the markets. I like that there is a loud voice against RMT but I personally don't think there is any way of stopping it.

I'm thinking I could give some people an idea of what exactly goes on and why it is so extremely difficult to stop.


First of all, I have RMT'd in the past, both legit and by third party.

By legit I mean by publishers that let you buy into the market through their own systems (Perfect World Entertainment, SOE etc).

By third party, back in middle/high school I sold ladder-only Runewords on Diablo 2 to certain vendors. One of which (I will not mention) gave me a platinum membership for my services which actually used to be worth something (except I understood it as a way for them to make some of their money back so it has been collecting dust for 7 years).

The truth is, the RMT market is too big to stop. I can't really fault SE here because it isn't like any publisher can reliably put a stop to it. At one point the US Government tried to pass a law allowing them to tax WOW gold sold online because of the amount of money that was leaving the country. I haven't looked into it in years but I remember at one point WOW gold was worth more than the Mexican Peso.

Some of you might think "Well, it can't be impossible to design a system that goes after gold farmers" and this is actually true. But it isn't the farmers that keep the RMT going... It's the buyers.

SE can brag about closing 4000 accounts at a time, but right after you see a train of 20 bots "asidgaisheraser" floating around right? This is because the amount of money they are making heavily outweighs how much they are spending to register new accounts. Not to mention the money they make from phishing player accounts(and using those accounts to farm more) and key gen'ing product keys (can you imagine buying FFXIV and finding the key already banned?).

Now the websites themselves advertising game currencies for real money vary rarely do any of the farming themselves. These sites are ran by people who you can consider the "middle man". The business of farming currency is open to anyone who then uses these websites to split profit on what is sold. This right here happens to be my biggest issue with the whole system. The truth is, people who buy game currency from these websites are enabling a business that uses children and other unacceptable measures, all working in abysmal conditions, while only paying them cents a day. Considering how much money is left over it makes you wonder where it all goes?

These "Middle man" websites are literally a front for who knows what really? Buyers could be funding drugs or even arms dealing.

It also isn't just China like most would think. These kinds of places are run all over the world. They find English speakers who try to build a report with players in games sometimes too to try to get them into it, adding them on Skype or MSN and giving them updates.

An example of one such person who approached me
http://i43.photobucket.com/albums/e3...t/Aion0154.jpg

Ultimately my point is that the only people that can put a stop to RMT are the people buying into it. There are too many of them, and sadly they don't care. Most will give the excuse that they work too much or don't have time to farm what they need to support their "gaming" but we all know that's crap. Personally even on limited time I find farming for myself to be a part of the game. It is part of the fun. If I had the gold handed to me I'd be desensitized to any accomplishment.

Disclaimer: The money I earned selling ladder-only Runewords on D2 went towards PC hardware upgrades... and maybe a few happy meals

[storm]

In Tera the cash shop was strictly cosmetic with a few minor quality of life bonuses with limited use, but their cash shop had a system that allowed players to use real money to profit in game from each other. Before they became free2play one of those methods was an ingame item that was a redeemable months subscription. So someone could spend $15 buy the item, and then auction it for in game currency. Once they better developed their cash shop they added cash shop cosmetics that did not bind to the buyers character until use, allowing them to spend money on the item, and again sell it to players.

The reason I bring this up is I was never harassed by RMT in Tera, because Tera had effectively blocked any meaningful rmting by offering a bit of that service themselves, which allowed them to police and monitor it as a function of their service.

Is that the answer for FFXIV? I highly doubt it.

My point is I agree with you the buyers are the problem, and Tera is an example of a company that figured out a way to create a system that used that to their advantage rather than fight endlessly against it.

[Selkie]

My point is I agree with you the buyers are the problem, and Tera is an example of a company that figured out a way to create a system that used that to their advantage rather than fight endlessly against it.

I find RMT in any game to be appalling and TERA's method of "legalizing" it resulted in people obtaining end game gear once they hit level cap without having the skill or capacity to have obtained it themselves. What the company was trying to accomplish was not ridding the game of RMT but making sure that they were the ones capitalizing on it. It still destroys the value of any in game accomplishment to allow players to get ahead with real world wealth.

[storm]

I find RMT in any game to be appalling and TERA's method of "legalizing" it resulted in people obtaining end game gear once they hit level cap without having the skill or capacity to have obtained it themselves. What the company was trying to accomplish was not ridding the game of RMT but making sure that they were the ones capitalizing on it. It still destroys the value of any in game accomplishment to allow players to get ahead with real world wealth.

I don't disagree. That was a problem. And generally is in games that legitimize RMT. My point wasn't about how awesome the system was but rather it was an example of the OP's point. Tera made rmting possible from their own cash shop and as such I never had to deal with aggressive shouts, annoying whispers, or account hackers and code exploiters.

It's not an endorsement of the method, it's an observation of the problem.

[Selkie]

I don't disagree. That was a problem. And generally is in games that legitimize RMT. My point wasn't about how awesome the system was but rather it was an example of the OP's point. Tera made rmting possible from their own cash shop and as such I never had to deal with aggressive shouts, annoying whispers, or account hackers and code exploiters.

It's not an endorsement of the method, it's an observation of the problem.

Oh! Sorry if I misinterpreted.

Although in TERA's defense, it didn't really have a problem with RMT spam even in the beginning before they started systems like chronoscrolls and the like. I think that is largely due to the character restrictions, like being unable to send whispers until you reached a certain level (which I believe was in place or maybe I'm mistaken), etc, and mutes for too many messages sent in trade chat (before global chat existed). As well, it was a much, much smaller game compared to FFXIV so the effort required to level a character and spam others wasn't wholly profitable. Additionally, we had GMs continuously present who would respond to players in trouble who asked for assistance in chat. RMT doesn't stand a chance when you can just insta-ban someone.

If we had a few more cautionary restrictions in place it could help greatly as long as RMT can't trick the server into thinking they're a higher level. The whole create character > spam entire server > delete > repeat cycle, is tiresome.

[Pr0c3ss0r]

It still destroys the value of any in game accomplishment to allow players to get ahead with real world wealth.

It do, but nothing can prevent it. It is a real problem when the company itself start to sell the "short cut", that is mega shame/greedy, unless the game is totally free and they handle all fee with it.

RMAH like blizzard did was the way around it, but they handled it poorly, the game concept was bad, the GOLD dupe with slow reaction was real real bad, the item dupe was bad, the replayability of D3 was POOR as hell, the tracking of who buy/sell was hidden information (unable to tell if is BLIZZARD selling lulz) And Even worse, Blizzard answered: We don't plan to sell item. (They never said they wont ever sell item...) the 15% Fee + 2$ fee was just too much.

DO NOT BUY GIL!!! simple

OR DO NOT PLAY THE GAME, that also simple. (for who have good job with money and not as much time that you have.)

[Argent_Wings]

snip

I'd like to bring up a counter example: Vindictus. They've had RMT for the last 2 years or so because in addition to selling NX credits for gold(which is against Nexon's ToS), people were STILL buying gold directly from the farmers and that's not even mentioning the player-run bots that were rampant before that.

[Ksenia]

You can get rid of RMT but the game needs to abandon certain notions.


In Lord of the Rings Online "Gold Farming" has a whole other meaning because you can do it in the literal sense. Buy soil, water, seeds and some other stuff all from a vendor and go plant them. Part of what you get in the crop is an optional cooking ingredient of Herbs and they drop at about 50% and vendor for 300% what you paid for the farming items you purchased. You can farm around 3 gold an hour doing this.

You never see people spamming gold for LotRO in the game. You could argue gold there has no meaning and you would be right but the truth is, gil here is on borrowed time. That's one of those notions that would need to be abandoned. That you can create an economy in a static PvE gear based game where nothing gets used up. Much like here, all gathered material is used to level and then it's just baggage. They have potions, they have food and just like here they both drop in the loot table and never get made. Much like here you can level up your legendary weapons and convert them to add on items for the next gen of gear. They even go one step further and let people make those items from single use recipes.

It's all in what you want to surrender as game concepts.

tldr, you need to starve them out. No shard throttle, no gil throttle, no grind throttle.

[Asriah]

You can get rid of RMT but the game needs to abandon certain notions...

tldr, you need to starve them out. No shard throttle, no gil throttle, no grind throttle.

You raise a good point, and I agree that game design is the issue, but if Diablo 2 is an example, you don't really need game currency to have value in order to have RMT a problem. Gold was worth nothing in that game but the items themselves... sold themselves.


People usually look at the real money and see it as the main issue here, but it isn't. The problem is that almost every MMO (this one included) has a flawed system in place. These game devs are counting on legit players to keep the market reasonable but it has always been available to people to ruin a market with or without the involvement of real money.

Lets say SE said they just banned 4000 people linked to buy/sale of in game currency for real money. What if instead, you had 4000 people who sat and farmed gold for their own legit uses and ended up screwing up the market anyways.

[Ri_ri]

Is the same problem with everything. No prostitution would happen if there no one to buy, maybe we should kill all man and make this world 100% girl.

But, lesbians...

Anyway, considering the JP servers doesn't have much RMT ads (I don't play on them, personally; just repeating what I've read here), I think what he says is true. If there's no demand, there'll be no supply.
I blame our individualistic culture.