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Goldselling: why are always the wrong questions asked?
Elikal
Member UncommonPosts: 7,912
With SOE and Blizzard going to new steps to fight Gold farming, the questions what to do with that issue have reached a new level. It is as ever fighting what you want to prevent upside down. Usually when something labelled "criminal" arises, unwanted behavior of people, what is usually called for is control and sanctions.
History shows us that this is a semi-optimal way to solve the problem. Some RL crimes are sanctioned with death peanlity, and still people do the crimes. So what we find is, penalities and controls can never be that tight that "crime" stops. On the contrary, in many regions of the world with extremely harsh penalities and explicit controls crime thrives. This is so because the problem is fought from the wrong side, from the effect.
What is rarely asked is, what is the CAUSE of the steep rise? I would very much see developers go into a detailled research for the CAUSES and REASONS why people today obviously do so much gold buying, when once that was rarer. The point I see always being missed in this entire debate is, why do people buy gold?
Usually you could expect, if a game is fun and bears a right balance between difficulty to attain things and rewards, gold buying would rarely happen. The fact that gold buying is so widely used in my pocket indicated two important things:
1. Something in the MMO systems is amiss. It is obvious that a vast number of people is not satisfied with the challange and progress balances. I am quite sure gold trading is FAR more widespread than anyone here expects, and I also presume most are casual players rarely seen on forums like this. Many still presume gold buyers are only a few ignorants, a minortiy not really worth to ponder about. But for them MMO playing is not a part of their "lifestyle" like for many of us here, its just some alternative to go Bowling or playing cards. Their value in playing MMOs is just different. And with MMOs getting out of the niche of games for teenage Nerds it is only natural that the standing of MMOs shifted in its participants. They expect something else than those old fashioned gamers. For them its merely like a hobby, like collecting stamps. If you have more money, you collect more stamps. They just bring different values into MMOs, and feel the system doesnt entirely suppor their amounts of time they can bring in. If MMOs would not have this ever widening gap between hardcore players with uber gear and casual players left with the trash, we would not HAVE a gold farming problem.
Being no crafter and only adventurer, I can safely say in any game like EQ2 or Vanguard, anything fancy like a house or a ship or any such fancy things are entriely out of reach, if you strictly stick to playing quests. Coming from a Pen and Paper background, I desire ot play my role, I want to go to a quest, and adventure. I dont want to run harvest cotton with my Paladin. Thats not what I play a defender of the weak, or a rogue or a mighty mage, to run around and gather some stupid crops or hack copper for hours. Its just a fact that the income for pure, old fashioned adventuring is WAY behind all those grind-heavy action, NONE of us would do in itself. Or can you imagine a single player game merely with crafting and harvesting? Stand at some crafting station and like a worker at a Ford coneveyor belt in 1930? Press the button all 3 seconds... But in MMO we are told that is fun. Maybe, after all those years more and more people realize this kind of extreme-grind is NOT fun? Maybe its not the PEOPLE who have gone wrong, but the MMO system?
2. The view and value of MMO gaming generally has changed. Raph Koster recently wrote something like that on his BLOG as well. In 1999 with Everquest and Ultima MMO gaming was for a gamers elite, for few people. But in 2008 people just have changed in their approach what they expect of a MMO and why they play it. They do not care so much anymore about what they attain with their "hard work", but they want more fun in the time they play it. Lets be honest here: EVERY MMO if every published as single player game would fail miserably, because even the most sophisticated MMO is, in itself boring, mindless and extremely simplistic in its gameplay. The only fact that lulls us to overlook this, is the fact we are with other people in a more dynamic environment. Based on pure entertainment, MMOs are still way behind the immersion and entertainment a single player game offers. And this is what shifted. People are less and less willing to do a MMO like work, like some chore they need to proof themselves in, they see it more as escapism, as some better entertainment than TV, and thus shifts the value of things, and people have become much less tolerant towards grind.
What I see is, it is entirely pointless to try to make people view MMOs different, to try to "educate" them into wanting different things from a MMO. Customers want what they want, and MMO companies can either start look what changed in the desires of players or ignore it. If you want to stem a flood you may build a dam, but the water will go *somewhere*, it doesnt just go away because you build a dam. Some desires are apparently not filled appropriately and instead of building higher and higher dams, we should look into the reaons why the flood constantly rises.
There are changes in how people view MMOs, and the MMOs did not adapt to these changes in views, in habits. They fell behind, clinging to 10+ year old gaming concepts, and every new MMO is more or less a copy of what is known and used for a decade.
The gold selling "problem" can never be solved with controls or penalities. Thats like pasting skin-tone cosmetics over a skin cancer. What we must do is start to look at the CAUSES and REASONS behind this, why so many people have such a grown interest in gold buying, and then we must try to work with that. The customers obviously buy gold, and in great numbers. Stigmatising them, telling them how evil they are buying gold will change little. If you make better locks, people with craft better lockpicks. We must start to look at the other end, the customers, and instead of stigmatising them we must go to them, ask them why they buy gold and how a game should change so they would rely on in-game mechanisms. We really must get over this entire taboo. We should not fear to look openly into what is going on.
People don't ask questions to get answers - they ask questions to show how smart they are. - Dogbert
Comments
I agree with what you said. I will try to show a different perspective here (business model).
I would like to point out that the devs know about the reasons for gold buying. They can track all macroers and bot users, they can find the distribution channels and they could stomp it all in just a few days. They simply choose not to. Why? Because gold buying is benefitting them. The goal of all the MMOs is this: To make maximum profit with minimum risk. The companies will do everything they can to make as many people play the game for as long as possible (= $$$). People are moaning about gold buying but is anyone quiting? no. Actually its the other way around. Gold buying allows players to stay longer in the game. A lot of casual players would quit if they did not have the extra source of money. Dev companies only move against the trading to keep the illusion of an anti-gold-trading stance.
The next problem is that the current business model of time sink+subsription based MMOs is hard to change. Companies prefer innovation through upgrading a product bit by bit. Goals are reduced risk and maximum money skimming. Huge innovations always have a certain high risk factor and have a cost of missed opportunity for medium innovation products. So how do you change the current MMO model that benefits from gold trading to one where it doesn't? And why exactly should a company do this in the first place? Don't forget: The players are not quiting over the trading (thats all the companies care about).
Alternate business models are huge risks. The item mall model is a fairly new one and appeared first in the asian MMO market (low risk environment). This model drops all pretences and is essentially a gold trading platform. Its simply the consequence of trying to maximize profits. The companies are trying to rake in the money by pushing out the third party gold sellers and selling the stuff themselves. All item mall games are built up the same way: Make the player need the item mall stuff. Without these items progression would come to a halt in mid game. This business model is becoming so successfull that it is being adopted everywhere. Eve online is even going beyond this. You pay CCP a monthly subscription and you can pay them to get ingame isk. Obviously they are trying to hide and deny it but in the end thats exactly what it is (subscription+item mall).
Right now the companies are going to where the money is. And that is gold/item trading. If you want to eliminate gold trading or item mall games you will have to come up with a plan that gives the companies higher profits. Anything else except mass subscription quiting will not work.
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Insanity: Doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.
Your saying becouse all wanne cheat let them we cant solve it ,so lets break this taboo(lol?)open and applouse all cheaters by buying gold.
Its a dumb sugesstion in away saying make games even more easy so all have uber items and all are happy.
If guys like you would run business or crimes solving this world would even be more a mess.
I quit all games where i see currency/item/powerlvl sellers.
I dont even buy games anymore like i did back in late 90's early 2000 becouse its all ruined by all these ebay buyers and walkthrough/mods cheaters.
I agree harsh punishment wont scare them off, but at least some companys try slow them down, these evil force who make mmo's community braindead with there gold selling busines.
Hope to build full AMD system RYZEN/VEGA/AM4!!!
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GPU: AMD Fury X(waiting for BIG VEGA 10 or 11 HBM2?(bit unclear now))
MEMORY:Corsair PLAT.DDR3 1866MHZ 16GB
PSU:Corsair AX1200i
OS:Windows 10 64bit
I agree as well. If the people whom provide these games to the public do not ban or do anything about Botters/hackers gold selling MMO sites. Then obviously they dont care what happens to the game anymore in there eyes its finished and no longer needs maintence. So bottom line is waste your time and money or dont. Its up to you.
As for new MMO's out or in beta testing right now theres nothing good other than AION AoC and Warhammer. Most of the new MMo's have atari or colleco vision graphics or combat styles from Nintendo era. Such as Last chaos , hero, Shailya, WYD, Darkeden. Gate to Heavens,2moons,Perfect World.Dark n Light, Fury , Maple, Solstice, Second life .... etc etc list goes on there all crap.
- Rewards linked with the same activity (best solo tools all given to soloers, best grouping tools all given to groupers, best raiding tools given to raiders) Either have specific server, specific loot (to each activity) or just an every path lead to success approach...I would support any of the 3.
- Speculations counter measure (you buy, you keep, the item can't be sold twice)
- Instancing
If you have these 3 points in game, goldsellers won't have any negative impact on the game. If noob03 buy his stuff, I can't care less. If I can't earn my stuff, I care a LOT.
Keep it simple!
- "If I understand you well, you are telling me until next time. " - Ren
As usual Forest, you miss the point. First of all, here in the US, we have some of the harshest anti-drug laws in the world, have one of the highest incarceration rates for drug crimes, yet we have a huge illegal drug problem. So as OP pointed out, harsh enforcement techniques rarely work.
So much better to consider new alternatives to the current model that requires large amounts of time invested to really succeed in these games. That's the model that needs to go, which I guess if you look at current gaming trends, is the way all games are heading.
You quit all games where you see currency/items/powerlvl sellers? Then you're not playing any MMORPG's right now, nor will you be any time in the future, because every game has them, and for the most part, will continue to have them.
I'm all for new game designs that provide entertainment without leaving players w/o a lot of free time no chance to be competitive.
"True friends stab you in the front." | Oscar Wilde
"I need to finish" - Christian Wolff: The Accountant
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
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"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
Several good posts made .
I would have to agree that for the most part ,that most companies don't want to stop the gold sellers.Unless it starts costing them sub's.
I doubt they could stop it 100%. But they could cut it by a healthy margin,rather simply.I'm not talking about external sites,but in-game spamming,Which for me is a real annoyance.
They could have in-game GM's with the power to bad accounts,could be a few responcible player GM's like they use to have in some of the games I use to play
A lot of games have started to limit just what came be done with trial accounts,in-game mail,trading and such. Which to an extent caused gold spammers to have to buy retail accounts to be able to access players.
Banning those that advertise gold and such in the chat channels wouldn't close external sites, but would sure make for a more enjoyable game,for me anyway.
Comes down to the real point tho..they have to actually want to stop it first.
Thats how the real world works. Blizzard did not take on the "big" WoW gold traders, they took on the little guy that was spamming ingame like crazy. If they wanted gold farming shut down, they could do it, but they dont.
Think about it. We are funding both the protection and destruction of states in the middle east, allot of it by corporate business's, and some by government programs, and you say business's are not criminal...
We are in a mess IRL and in MMORPG's and there is absolutly NOTHING we can do about it, other than cry on forums.
The definition of insanity: doing the same thing over and over expecting different results.
If everyone did want to cheat, then obviously the smartest thing to do is to allow them. This is after all entertainment software. The whole idea if it is to allow you to do the things you want to do.
The problems arise when a minority of people wish to do something the majority does not wish them to.
I don't see that there is a solution to this issue. The nature of these grind games makes gold selling, account selling and power leveling an obvious market.
If you can't handle it, your best bet would be to seek a different style of game better suited to your temperment.
Rather than fight it with no possibility of success, games companies should stop wasting our money and instead regulate the service, perhaps in the way SOE or CCP do by providing their own item exchanges, selling their own gold and providing a safe enviroment to trade accounts, in return for a commission.
Thats how the real world works. Blizzard did not take on the "big" WoW gold traders, they took on the little guy that was spamming ingame like crazy. If they wanted gold farming shut down, they could do it, but they dont.
Think about it. We are funding both the protection and destruction of states in the middle east, allot of it by corporate business's, and some by government programs, and you say business's are not criminal...
We are in a mess IRL and in MMORPG's and there is absolutly NOTHING we can do about it, other than cry on forums.
Blizzard didn't take them on, because they weren't breaking the law.Blizzard is not the almighty all powerful uberlord of death and destruction and closing down legally operating companies or preventing private citizens from exercising their rights to trade amongst themselves freely is not within it's arsenal of magic powers.
If Blizzard could shut them down, it would, because many of it's valued customes feel like Forest nl does and Blizzard wants them to be happy and keep playing and paying.
In game spammers on the other hand, Blizzard can do things about and has.
As long as people have more money than time, they will seek out people with more time than money. That is the basic exchange, and no game system can circumvent it.
It's been here forever. It's here to stay. It'll be here forever.
I agree. The problem is not the gold mining. It is the need for it. What causes the need for it? Most MMO's are 'stuff' oriented. Get gold, buy stuff. Do quests, get stuff. 'Stuff' becomes the heart of the game, and getting all the Best Stuff is the ultimate goal. Really, what else is there in most MMOs? It is the Stuff Ladder. Once you get to the top and have all the Best Stuff, you simply run out of rungs to climb until they release More Stuff and higher level cap.
The second shoe that drops is that some Stuff is hard to get. You need a lot of money just to get it, and most ways of generating ingame money result from time-consuming grinding. But, Stuff can be bought, sold, or traded ingame and out of game. Some people are willing to trade time and Stuff for real money, and others are more than willing to pay. Any idiot can see just what these two aspects will result in.
The only solution to curb the gold farming is to make Stuff not mean as much. Make other aspects of the game mean more, such as gaining social rank or continuing causes. Social rank (with NPCs) is impossible to trade without selling an entire character. Continued causes are impossible to trade. Also, cut out a lot of the grind. If a person does not enjoy the getting Stuff and leveling grind, don't force them to do it! Make alternate paths to take where getting Stuff and levels are easy without the need for extra money, but build in sacrifices so that it is equal in worth to the grinding path.
I changed my mind. PlaneShift is not worth the time.
I can see three practical approaches to make people desire less gold.
1. You can generally make a game not gear-centred, like City of Heroes. I doubt it has any gold selling, since there IS no gold. It has a really great diversity in character design instead of gear and a few things attainable only by quests, like the cloak. I felt VERY relaxed playing CoH, since all the greed spiral was out! The only reason I quit it was because the instances are very few.
2. I guess a majority of people buys gold for expensive prestige items, like houses or mounts. There is a way to give a simple version to low players cheap and still have luxurious ones for the rich and powerful. Good examples how this is handled is housing in EQ2 and horses in Vanguard. In Eq2 you can get a one or two room house right away. Its affordable even for very casual players, since you only pay for the weeks you use the house, you dont have to pay every week, even if you are away. In VG while it soon even will get Flying Mounts, you can buy a cheap mount with Level 10 for just a few silver. Bad examples would be housing in Vanguard or Lotro, ships in Vanguard or WOW & EQ2 mounts. Such things widen the gap between harcore and casual too much, leaving casual and low level players with nothing. Looking at EQ2 housing or VG mounts you see you can inplement very luxurious things for hardcore players and still leave others not in the rain.
3. You can assure the quest income of coin and rewards is good enough to minimize the need for additional coin. But that would mean to dry out crafting, which I see as secondary system anyways, but I know some cling to it. Crafters usually dont want many gear drops and rewards, so maybe more coin would be a compromise. Generally one hour of killing mobs and questing should give the same money than one hour crafting or harvesting. As it is, adventuring is undervalued compared to how insane rich crafters can get in most MMOs.
I feel there would be several ways to counter the desire for gold buying, but most MMO companies are just too lazy to think about it.
People don't ask questions to get answers - they ask questions to show how smart they are. - Dogbert
The simple way to give rid of the gold farmers is to sell the gold themselves. The company will make a lot more money, there won't be any more farmbots running around, getting in your way. Everyone is happy.
SWG-PreCU: You could get everything in the game really.. Even as a newbie you could easily afford that armor or that weapon or the house or the starship or that vehicle or that facejob... Yet Gold sellers existed... Despite that the crafter economy made most stuff dead cheap....
Sometimes I don't think it's because of the grind to get things that makes a market for goldsellers... As I said above, in SWG-PreCU there was no grind for gold really.. 1 ADVENTUR trip and you had your house(notice: not 1 go out and whack 1000 bunnies)... It's more likely that people are just too frickin lazy to even play the game.. They want the stuff without even playing the game... Get game, Log in, Buy gold, Buy stuff, Log out.
In SWG-NGE it's worse tho. The game really introduced "teh grind", and since there is no crafter economy, everything is loot based, the prices have hit the roof(I might say in some cases the prices has hit the friggin Andromeda Galaxy, prices rising from a few thousands to several millions). And after that happened, the Gold sellers increased tenfolds in the game... Spamming their golds and webpages...
In the NGE's case, it is the grind that creates the market for gold sellers... When you need to spend insane ammounts of play time to earn what you want, or have to stand in one spot grinding hoping for that one good loot to sell... The market for gold is there. Then not only the frickin "too lazy to even play" people buys gold, but also the "I got money and hell if I want to spend hour upon hour grinding when I can have fun instead" crowd buys gold... Log in, Play for an hour, check prices, find out that 1 hour netted you 1/200th of the price of the item you wanted, buy gold, buy item, log out poorer.
The market will always be there for as long as there is the grind, or there is the unbanned player that don't even want to play the game, just have the bling...
And now, players are fighting for acceptance for gold buying.... Whats next? Since "everyone" uses the dupe exploit, and the devs only ban a few of the players, let us all accept the dupe?
CoH isn't crippled with goldsellers, but since they add the WW and BM, the goldsellers are present and...insistant.
CoH answer perfectly to 2 of the 3 points I spoke off. With CoH as an example, you clearly see that you have to prevent speculation...speculation is hurting the players in general, especially the casuals.
Goldsellers made it so that a casual has virtually no chance of buying an unique Miracle + recovery (as well as many other). I suspect that the devs add input of such IOs from time to time, to unblock the gorgeoing the goldsellers are creating, but by doing so, most of the new IOs* are purchased by the goldsellers and only a minority of patient players get it...but been patient when you are a casual and kinda broken...this isn't quite fair for the casuals...if you have 20 millions total and are a casual, would you leave a purchase offer for that IO you want at 15 millions and prevent yourself from getting new IOs faster, when you see the price is 60 millions (the goldsellers buy all low and resell high).
Again, if anyone has a doubt about how bad speculation can hurt an economy, just check CoH...it is immune to camps (instancing) and peoples can do what they want to earn the items they want (yeah, you can get it soloing or grouping, whichever you want...or raiding, whatever fits you). But these goldsellers in CoH example, clearly display that speculation is hurting the game.
For anyone observing the market, devs interventions are quite easy to pinpoints, they add an influx of things which are impossibly hard to get for casuals...but that is a LOT of constant efforts, maybe still necessary, but they could reduce that amount of work a lot if they would just get rid of speculation.
*: If no staff are adding an input of precise IOs to the market...then it is very strange and not following the rules of economy at all...see the prices are slowly, but steadily going up and out of reach...tons of peoples are bidding (including the goldseller who buy low and sell high). And suddenly, 1 day, tons of IOs storm the market and the price is divide by 4 easily...and then it climb back again. Of course, it could be the actions of the goldsellers themselves, but...I find it easier to believe it is devs inputs...
PS: An alternative solution to limit speculation instead of removing it, would be to have endless supplies of everything at a firm price, and players can just undercut these prices...I prefer the you buy/you keep approach however. But, it would also be possible. The you buy/you keep approach favor casuals a lot more than the endless supplies IMO.
- "If I understand you well, you are telling me until next time. " - Ren
It's a start I suppose, but loooong way to go.
Quote Elikal: "What is rarely asked is, what is the CAUSE of the steep rise? I would very much see developers go into a detailled research for the CAUSES and REASONS why people today obviously do so much gold buying, when once that was rarer. The point I see always being missed in this entire debate is, why do people buy gold?"
That's easy, time. There are no stats anywhere as to the breakdown in demographics as to who the gold buyers are. I suspect that it is not the casual players as assumed, but the hardcore. A casual player is content with having blues or green, a hardcore player isn't and so paradoxically despite being a 'stronger' character and has the potential to have more gold, probably doesn't. Ask yourself, truthfully, who is more likely to buy an epic dagger from the auction house that gives them an extra 5 dps for 3000g, a hardcore player or a casual player?
No annoying animated GIF here!
A hardcore player that can only play casual amount of time ... maybe ...
......
The OP has a point, albeit such an obvious one that it is no surprise that everyone agrees.
It is obvious that people are not looking for good gameplay in an MMO. I propose that bragging rights are the only reason why people play MMOs, and buying gold allows you to skip the painful time-wasting part you are supposed to go through before you get to brag.
Which makes gold buyers not cheaters, but cowards.
I think I remember reading on the FoH board that 40% of people bought gold or something..simply to pay for repair costs from raiding. I don't know if BC has changed any of this? What other reasons are there to buy gold? Simply to buy something in the auction house you can't afford? Why can't those people afford it? too much of a treadmill for the casual player? or?
SOE has done nothing to curb RMT, they are in fact embracing it, both by producing a new game "The Agency" which will be 100% RMT designed, and partnering with an outside source "LIve Gamer" to handle RMT sales on some EQ2 servers.
Unlike Blizzard, SOE has sued no one in classic EQ, or their regular EQ2 servers to stop RMT.
There is nothing amiss in the design of MMOGs that are item centric and require lots of time and expended effort in game to progress and earn those items. The problem is with lazy and unscrupulous gamers who think it's ok to ruin the game for others by pursuing shortcuts with RMT.
I'm sure everyone wants to be max level with the best items... so we should allow them?......
The OP has a point, albeit such an obvious one that it is no surprise that everyone agrees.
It is obvious that people are not looking for good gameplay in an MMO. I propose that bragging rights are the only reason why people play MMOs, and buying gold allows you to skip the painful time-wasting part you are supposed to go through before you get to brag.
Which makes gold buyers not cheaters, but cowards.
Yes.Of course we should allow people to do what they want in a game that they pay for.
That system works fine in Guild Wars (and any number of non RPG titles). If you enjoy balanced PvP, it's a pre-requesite to any game system. It's only really subscritption fee games that need to restrict level access as they need the timesink to get your money.
Personally, I don't want to start at max level with all the items, the continued character development is part of the game I enjoy, but if you want to skip that bit, it's no sweat off my nose.
Or is the problem with overbearing and self righteous gamers with too much free time on their hands who seek to ruin the game for anybody who does not wish imitate the way they play?
I can think of no game yet that has been "ruined" by RMT.
I can. Lineage2 (at least for me).
RMT does ruin the illusion of having a virtual world completely separated from RL.
But there is no way to separate virtual world from real life, because virtual world is proped up by time and money both taken from RL, without either such virtual world will not exist. Games are meant to entertain and distract players from RL for a short period of time; too much so then games themselves become a problem, a social ill if you will.
Spending real life money on a game can ruin the game experience, and spending too much time playing a game can ruin real life. Such is the dilemma we're facing. Some can argue it's all about individual's choice, but such a choice has hidden cost to either virtual world or RL society at large.
In which does our royalty lies: virtual world or real world?? Its answer will determine which way the industry is going.
I hear that from many endgame WOW players. They go into raids regularly to get their high end purple items for PVP, but the repair costs of raids are MUCH higher than the average outcome. The few drops get to a handfull and the rest is left with the STEEP repair costs, esepcially the purple high end items seem to have insane costs. I played WOW for a few months, and both me and others bought gold for one sole reason back then: to buy a mount. So practically it went right back to the NPC, out of the system and thus didnt cause any speculation, and I am quite sure a LOT of bought gold either goes to such things as houses or mounts or in case of Raids/PVP to repair, which both leaves the system right away. In many games the really good gear is bound anyway, so I dont see such a big market for gear bought via dollars anyway.
Its just one of the points where simply the MMO system is the cause, not the evil of the people playing the game.
When I go back to my Pen and Paper days, as a Dungeon Master, whenever my group of adventurers was playing an adventure, one story, they all found loot on the way they could use, they rarely found things only to sell, like badger claws or skeleton ribs or such vendor trash. Second, after the adventure every one of them got a few things, a new dagger for the rogue, a new magical hat for the wizard asf. In MMO gaming you can play endless and gather only trash or things you cant use, or you are in a group (or worse in a raid) where all contribute but only few get something. The result is a subjective felt gap of fairness, which surely adds a lot to the desire to "make up for the felt justice - gap" and just buy with $$$ what they feel they didnt get.
In my Dark Eye evenings (the German D&D like game) there were no houses or horses or such extreme prestige items, and thus no envy, no comparision to unattainable items. If you knew about what a level 40 player had, being a lv 10 yourself, you could expect to have something similar once you get 40. In MMOs you cant be so sure, because much is based on grind, which takes a lot of time. So the BIG difference which creates the gap between uber chars and trash chars is the gap of TIME people can afford to put into a game, not the level. And thats the probem. People get to level 40 or 50, but since they have no time for the "extra work" of grinding, crafting or whatever, they get the same level and still are WAY beind others of the same level. Worse still, while they are all rather similar in the low levels, the higher they get the wider the gap gets between the uber rich and the trash players.
They just feel this unfair and want to close the gap, by buying those prestige items. Clever game design would just not allow such a gap. They would have a gap between what differnt LEVEL own, but only a small gap between people of the SAME level. Thats were all the feeling of being not satisfied and second best comes from.
People don't ask questions to get answers - they ask questions to show how smart they are. - Dogbert