So Devs...Are we going to rule with an iron fist this time around?

[SkyeWindbinder]

Funny you say that

I remember that!

It was beautiful!

[Ryokyu]

Funny you say that

lmao yooo altena i see rin there

[Duelle]

Going to have to disagree with you on that one. Find me an MMO that hasn't had a problem with RMT, and I'll show you an MMO that was never released to the public, or that nobody played.

I didn't know WoW was privately run and was played by nobody...

[xXHalloweenTrixXx]

I didn't know WoW was privately run and was played by nobody...

...What? ...

[IndigoDarkwolf]

Going to have to disagree with you on that one. Find me an MMO that hasn't had a problem with RMT, and I'll show you an MMO that was never released to the public, or that nobody played.

I didn't know WoW was privately run and was played by nobody...

*snirk*WoW has never had a problem with RMT, never ev... *snort* No, I'm sorry, I just can't say that with a straight face. I'm sorry, I really am, but I just can't.

[SkyeWindbinder]

I didn't know WoW was privately run and was played by nobody...

Uh... have you ever played WoW? lol

[Duelle]

...What? ...

I guess I'll reiterate what I said earlier in this thread.

If the other standard MMOs are any indication, RMT won't have much of a leg to stand on so long as the developers keep control over progression. RMT was stupidly trivial in WoW because almost all of the character progression is tied to PvP via arena points or BoP gear via raids. They got so desperate that they started making lv1 alts, running them to the city to shout ads for their RMT company, after which everyone in the zone would report them for spamming and continue with their day.

In plain english: Because of how progression in WoW worked, you could not buy success with gold. Which then equates to a weaker market for RMT due to a decreased demand. The fact the game was designed in such a way that there wasn't much they could truly exploit really helped.

Sure, they were still around, and the extremely lazy could actually buy from them, but all that gold at the most would get you an over-priced rare mount or some super rare pet. As I said, we mostly reported them for spam and moved on, seeing that their presence was trivial (which means that no, we weren't throwing fits like some of you do over RMT) and did not impede in the gameplay experience of others.

Now compare that to games like Lineage II and FFXI, both of which had venues they could exploit and thus contribute to inflation while creating demand for what they sell. RMT used to appropriate themselves of certain areas in Lineage II with decent money drops and the super rare crafting mats helped them even more. FFXI had them camping NMs with drops that sold for very high prices, appropriated themselves of supplying for crafts (not to mention those that camped the guild shops for rare mats that ended up in the AH at least 4 times the standard price, though normal players were guilty of this as well). Both games were designed in such a way that they had a field day, and they did.

[IndigoDarkwolf]

Because of how progression in WoW worked, you could not buy success with gold. Which then equates to a weaker market for RMT due to a decreased demand. The fact the game was designed in such a way that there wasn't much they could truly exploit really helped.

I understand what you're trying to say about how an MMO's design can contribute to or discourage RMTs. It's hardly fair to criticize FFXI for having support reps on hand to identify RMTs, though, since WoW most definitely has the same kind of people. So does EVE Online, Lineage II, and basically any MMO where the developers actually care at all.

If the game has a way of trading currency for something of value, then it will have an RMT problem. If WoW's gold was really worthless, there wouldn't be an auction house.

Really, what developers can do well to help themselves is make it easy for players to report RMTs including a trustworthy chat log, and to record market and trade activity. Really, the more time they spend on tools to help players participate in policing and to help their reps investigate reports, the more success they're going to have fighting RMTs. I suspect WoW has very good tools these days, so RMTs get shut down quickly, making it more lucrative for them to go exploit other games.

[fusional]

Will both of you have my e-kittens?

[mbncd]

I agree with those saying reporting of other players should be more accessible.

It should be possible to either right click on characters (or character names in the chat log) and report them directly that way or have some sort of "copy name" function in their right click menu to access some other in game reporting function and paste the name in that way.

Things like manually typing in nonsense names that are hard to remember and having to go out of the game to make the reports (that after all of that often seem to fall on deaf ears) is why so many don't report half the characters they should, if they can be bothered reporting anyone at all.

Being able to report them from a right click menu or being able to at least copy the offending player's name from the right click menu (and then taking that to an in game reporting interface) would really make a big difference...