Eldurian said: I also find the first ad particularly funny. Virtual real estate IS the new real estate [...]
Actually that's how SL started too, and some people made quite a sum on the -virtual- real estate market SL was a really cool idea with huge goals (I remember on voices even to replace the web and such, libraries instead of wikis, news sites opened up their HQs inside with bulletins, etc.), but I think it was both too expensive and difficult, so it never went beyond a certain point - building a website is (almost) free, much easier than building/modeling something in SL, and more accessible. But it was a nice experience, and their scripting was fun.
Tried it again last year, for checking a similar mmo-esque project inside like the above linked Remnants of Earth, and I must say, SL is pretty weird now But the world is simply massive, it developed a lot over the years. Don't know though, how much money you can make from it, haven't stayed long enough to map out the system.
Ashe Chung, who I believe was the first person to make a six-figure income from SL, is now running a virtual goods store for Shroud of the Avatar. http://www.anshex.com/shroudoftheavatar
Given the stupidity of the SotA community, the OP can probably bleed them dry in a matter of weeks.
I haven't seen this primary advertising scheme anywhere, yet. I might be wrong, so if you can provide some examples of this I'd highly appreciate it. Because when you go to their site, it's not mentioned anywhere how much real world money you can make (if you mean a lot by this sentence). It just says they have a real cash economy, which they done.
I think the tone of the ads is pretty well an implied "You can make money!" even if they aren't outright saying those exact words. I certainly don't think they are trying to make people think "Invest REAL CASH in this game and probably never get anything back out of it!"
These both follow the general tone of the Entropia ads that keep popping up in my Facebook feed.
I also find the first ad particularly funny. Virtual real estate IS the new real estate and makes people a lot of money but the particular virtual real estate people get rich off of is websites, and the people making money off of it are people with a pretty good skillset in terms of both web development and marketing. Not people buying Arcadia underground deeds.
That's what I am talking about. It is implied you can make money, but not as you have worded it before. It's like seeing a casino ad saying "play on our slot machines win our big jackpots!" then accuse them of a Ponzi scheme.
And people have made money on Entropia. I know plenty of them, and they have scored big. You can say the same thing about the stock market.
You keep adding the "makes people a lot of money" part yourself, it is your personal interpretation. No one has ever said everyone can make a lot of money by playing the real estate market, how it is implied that you should make a lot by playing the virtual one?
Anyways, my point is--Entropia Universe--is in no way a Ponzi scheme. You can compare it to a bloodsucking casino, but not Charles Ponzi!
Constantine, The Console Poster
"One of the most difficult tasks men can perform, however much others may despise it, is the invention of good games and it cannot be done by men out of touch with their instinctive selves." - Carl Jung
I wanted to see how profitable Entropia Universe was after it released. I realized the only thing you could do without investing money was Sweat Creatures and Sell The Sweat to people who invested money into EU. The literal USD value of sweat was pennies over hours of sweat collecting. I stopped playing at that point because it was an obvious waste of time / scam.
I later tried EU again after a tutorial system was added. The tutorial gave you a weapon, ammo, and armor -- to a new account. I went through this freebie newbie gear in 1 hour of playing, and I actually made ZERO PEDs worth of currency to continue my journey. It's obvious you're FORCED to pay to play.
I also tried cheating the system by creating 100 newbie accounts and transferring everything to a main account. After using up 100 accounts worth of guns and ammo, I made maybe 1-2 dollars worth of PEDs. (by the way, they removed the freebie gear that you used to get from the tutorial -- who knows if they added something different for new players)
Basically Entropia Universe is an incredible money drain. If I had actually purchased the equivalent amount of newbie guns/ammo that I had traded from other accounts, I would've easy spent 20+ dollars.
Entropia Universe is considered to be a casino instead of an MMORPG. You can see across the global chat when players strike a jackpot -- "Tyrannocockus Dix has dropped 50.2 PED value to John Neverdie's group on Planet Phallus!" -- and seeing this is quite rare. People believe that the developers set a calculated PED drop rate once the planet/hunting area sees enough PED flow from players.
And here's a really funny joke for a game that consists of a Real Money Economy:
If you don't login for a few years, your account gets terminated. You lose all of the money you invested into this game.
The games side of Entropia isn't even any fun, I'm surprised people even bother with beyond trying to make a fortune, there is not point to it. Biggest MMO pay 2 win scam in history that no one talks about.
Entropia Universe is considered to be a casino instead of an MMORPG. You can see across the global chat when players strike a jackpot -- "Tyrannocockus Dix has dropped 50.2 PED value to John Neverdie's group on Planet Phallus!" -- and seeing this is quite rare. People believe that the developers set a calculated PED drop rate once the planet/hunting area sees enough PED flow from players.
And here's a really funny joke for a game that consists of a Real Money Economy:
Pretty much this. Not a Ponzi scheme. But a casino. Also you can invest on virtual real estate, and the people who have made money out of that invested serious money and worked on it for a long period of time. You can google success stories. To be honest, it's not a total awful step towards creating virtual worlds.
I personally look forward for another company creating a virtual world, with much less RNG, much less greed, and many more options for very smaller investments.
Constantine, The Console Poster
"One of the most difficult tasks men can perform, however much others may despise it, is the invention of good games and it cannot be done by men out of touch with their instinctive selves." - Carl Jung
Wurm Online is definitely still the best I've found. It has very in depth crafting system, in-fact I would say it has the best crafting system of any MMO ever.
Almost all MMOs follow the format of "Find Materials -> Execute Recipe -> Timer Bar -> Finished Item"
In Wurm, making a sword would follow this model "Find Materials -> Heat Iron to Glowing Hot -> Execute Recipe -> TimerBar -> Low QL Sword -> Sharpen Low QL Sword -> Polish Low QL Sword -> Temper Low QL Sword -> Add High QL Iron to Low QL Sword -> Hammer Low QL Sword-> .......10-20 Minutes........ -> Medium QL Sword -> ...........30-40 Minutes............ -> High QL Sword -> ...........Hours at super high skill level......... -> Exceptional QL Sword"
In other words being a blacksmith =/= being a miner. Being a blacksmith = being a blacksmith. You spend long hours working your sword and produce an item of value at the end. Everything you do generates value and you can make enough money to sustain your premium actively playing most professions.
Certain professions such as being a Vynoran or Paaweelr priest with good channeling skills who does enchants generate the most value though. There is also a huge market for bricks and mortar that a lot of newbs use to break into the game.
If you are really looking for an RMT community that is not a casino I can't recommend anything higher than Wurm ATM.postlarval said:
Eldurian said: I also find the first ad particularly funny. Virtual real estate IS the new real estate [...]
Actually that's how SL started too, and some people made quite a sum on the -virtual- real estate market SL was a really cool idea with huge goals (I remember on voices even to replace the web and such, libraries instead of wikis, news sites opened up their HQs inside with bulletins, etc.), but I think it was both too expensive and difficult, so it never went beyond a certain point - building a website is (almost) free, much easier than building/modeling something in SL, and more accessible. But it was a nice experience, and their scripting was fun.
Tried it again last year, for checking a similar mmo-esque project inside like the above linked Remnants of Earth, and I must say, SL is pretty weird now But the world is simply massive, it developed a lot over the years. Don't know though, how much money you can make from it, haven't stayed long enough to map out the system.
Ashe Chung, who I believe was the first person to make a six-figure income from SL, is now running a virtual goods store for Shroud of the Avatar. http://www.anshex.com/shroudoftheavatar
Given the stupidity of the SotA community, the OP can probably bleed them dry in a matter of weeks.
So is SotA a game that allows RMT? Is that a real MMO / Going to be a real MMO or is more of a sever based survival game?
Also is the RMT openly allowed for all items or is it like Star Citizen's grey market?
I wanted to see how profitable Entropia Universe was after it released. I realized the only thing you could do without investing money was Sweat Creatures and Sell The Sweat to people who invested money into EU. The literal USD value of sweat was pennies over hours of sweat collecting. I stopped playing at that point because it was an obvious waste of time / scam.
I later tried EU again after a tutorial system was added. The tutorial gave you a weapon, ammo, and armor -- to a new account. I went through this freebie newbie gear in 1 hour of playing, and I actually made ZERO PEDs worth of currency to continue my journey. It's obvious you're FORCED to pay to play.
I also tried cheating the system by creating 100 newbie accounts and transferring everything to a main account. After using up 100 accounts worth of guns and ammo, I made maybe 1-2 dollars worth of PEDs. (by the way, they removed the freebie gear that you used to get from the tutorial -- who knows if they added something different for new players)
Basically Entropia Universe is an incredible money drain. If I had actually purchased the equivalent amount of newbie guns/ammo that I had traded from other accounts, I would've easy spent 20+ dollars.
Entropia Universe is considered to be a casino instead of an MMORPG. You can see across the global chat when players strike a jackpot -- "Tyrannocockus Dix has dropped 50.2 PED value to John Neverdie's group on Planet Phallus!" -- and seeing this is quite rare. People believe that the developers set a calculated PED drop rate once the planet/hunting area sees enough PED flow from players.
And here's a really funny joke for a game that consists of a Real Money Economy:
If you don't login for a few years, your account gets terminated. You lose all of the money you invested into this game.
Yeah that account termination is in their agreement, but it's not active at all. I haven't played for years and my account is still active and all my stuff is still there. At times I wish they'd remove the account though because the game is just plain awful and I'd rather not be reminded of it
Wurm Online is definitely still the best I've found. It has very in depth crafting system, in-fact I would say it has the best crafting system of any MMO ever.
Almost all MMOs follow the format of "Find Materials -> Execute Recipe -> Timer Bar -> Finished Item"
In Wurm, making a sword would follow this model "Find Materials -> Heat Iron to Glowing Hot -> Execute Recipe -> TimerBar -> Low QL Sword -> Sharpen Low QL Sword -> Polish Low QL Sword -> Temper Low QL Sword -> Add High QL Iron to Low QL Sword -> Hammer Low QL Sword-> .......10-20 Minutes........ -> Medium QL Sword -> ...........30-40 Minutes............ -> High QL Sword -> ...........Hours at super high skill level......... -> Exceptional QL Sword"
In other words being a blacksmith =/= being a miner. Being a blacksmith = being a blacksmith. You spend long hours working your sword and produce an item of value at the end. Everything you do generates value and you can make enough money to sustain your premium actively playing most professions.
Certain professions such as being a Vynoran or Paaweelr priest with good channeling skills who does enchants generate the most value though. There is also a huge market for bricks and mortar that a lot of newbs use to break into the game.
If you are really looking for an RMT community that is not a casino I can't recommend anything higher than Wurm ATM.postlarval said:
Eldurian said: I also find the first ad particularly funny. Virtual real estate IS the new real estate [...]
Actually that's how SL started too, and some people made quite a sum on the -virtual- real estate market SL was a really cool idea with huge goals (I remember on voices even to replace the web and such, libraries instead of wikis, news sites opened up their HQs inside with bulletins, etc.), but I think it was both too expensive and difficult, so it never went beyond a certain point - building a website is (almost) free, much easier than building/modeling something in SL, and more accessible. But it was a nice experience, and their scripting was fun.
Tried it again last year, for checking a similar mmo-esque project inside like the above linked Remnants of Earth, and I must say, SL is pretty weird now But the world is simply massive, it developed a lot over the years. Don't know though, how much money you can make from it, haven't stayed long enough to map out the system.
Ashe Chung, who I believe was the first person to make a six-figure income from SL, is now running a virtual goods store for Shroud of the Avatar. http://www.anshex.com/shroudoftheavatar
Given the stupidity of the SotA community, the OP can probably bleed them dry in a matter of weeks.
So is SotA a game that allows RMT? Is that a real MMO / Going to be a real MMO or is more of a sever based survival game?
Also is the RMT openly allowed for all items or is it like Star Citizen's grey market?
Here's their official stance:
"We will not restrict exchange of goods but we will not officially endorse these exchanges due to liability issues and staffing bandwidth. All exchanges of virtual good for real dollars are to remain confined to this part of the forum ONLY. No in-game or chat based real dollar exchanges are allowed. Exchanges are at the players own risk and governed by the terms of service of whatever third party platform (eBay, PayPal, etc.) that is used. Portalarium reserves the right to restrict any activities if they cause widespread issues for our community or if these activities involve exploits of any kind."
As for it being a real MMO, I would say 'yes' although it's the most heavily instanced MMO I've ever played.
I wouldn't count on striking it rich...it probably has 200 regular people playing at the most.
Wow. I thought Wurm was small and it has 660 people currently logged in. 200 regular players is... a TINY community.
I'm not counting on striking it rich from RMTs. I play games primarily for the enjoyment but getting a tangible reward from your success at a hobby always helps enhance the enjoyment if you get what I mean.
At this point I'm leaning more toward RMT games purely because of awareness that none of the games on the market right now are suitable homes for me longterm, and what I do in these games will eventually be lost when I find a game that is. Building up a bit of side income helps keep me feeling like what I am doing has some meaning in the longterm. You can't take cash out of every game but you can invest cast in pretty much any game.
The plan is actually to build a longterm investment portfolio thats profits go directly into the "Gaming and Entertainment" section of my budget when I do find I game I want to play longterm.
In Shroud of the Avatar players are allowed to sell items, gold and materials for dollars, Store credits and in game gold on official forum. It's a full mmorpg not server based, the gameplay is fantastic and skill based, so none can pay to win
It seems to me RMT games (Second Life, Entropia) originated under very specific conditions.
They came about in the early 2000s, when there was a strong push for "social spaces". You had hundreds of social hub games popping up. Most of these were glorified chat rooms, with little content and no RMT. I think the interaction between people and online social platforms was still unexplored - people were trying to figure out what online spaces are all about. There was this notion that online worlds are little universes similar to the real one, where people can create tangible things separate to the real world.
As a result, people saw a lot of value in each separate virtual space. If people were going to "migrate" parts of their real life into a virtual space, it made a lot of sense to try and own these virtual areas. I'd argue RMT games were a direct outcome of this train of thought. If you see a virtual island as an equivalent of a real island, it makes a lot of sense to buy it for $100.000+. You see the virtual activity on the island (renting property, people killing virtual animals, etc.) as the way to recoup your investment.
Today, the environment is very different. I think our notion of virtual worlds has evolved. People generally see virtual spaces as extensions of the real world, not as completely separate entities. The communities are a lot more transient - people are less attached to individual products. You also see overarching identities, such as a Steam username or even Facebook, which let you link all your virtual games into one place. In turn, games are more seen as an experience, rather than a tangible space. This is not to say things like character development don't have place in games anymore - I'm just saying there is a subtle change in the way we perceive the worlds we interact with.
All of this has implications on RMT games today. If you view virtual spaces as an entertainment service, it makes less sense to purchase an island for $100.000, aiming to recoup the investment through gameplay. Instead, it makes a lot more sense to invest $100.000 on a broader level, aiming to recoup the investment through the service itself. Essentially, you are investing $100.000 in strengthening your virtual "brand", which then allows you to make a return on the investment. An example of this would be purchasing a virtual island as a person, getting a 20% revenue share from any micro-transaction happening on the island. This is in contrast to purchasing an island, getting dinosaur teeth loot you then exchange back for money.
RMT models will have to reflect this change. I loved both Second Life and Entropia, so I see this shift as an interesting promise. I think we will see a new kind of payment model in the near future, one that leverages the fact that games are an entertainment service. This could result in SecondLife-like games, where the people themselves are a lot more involved in forming broader connections with others, beyond just selling virtual items in a virtual shop.
On a serious note, I always want to test it out of playing an MMORPG that allows RMT, as long as there is no freaking spam in game on public channels or trade of RMT deals going on or offers...
I highly believe allowing RMT on a massively populated MMORPG, such as Eve Online, would make people take the game more seriously. And would create more world PvP. Botting should not be legal, but so many people will be out there farming, it will create tons of pvp action and gankers and guild pvp.
Purchasing virtual goods with your money will not be expensive, neither will it be non-existent of a price. It will generally be pretty dirt cheap / cheap, and will always follow a market price of supply + demand.
As mmorpg's always work, you can generally ALWAYS make more virtual currency in game of working at a minimum wage job flipping burgers and using that to RMT purchase, rather than trying to self farm in game.
Here is a list of games that offer RMT, or somewhat a form of RMT.
1.) Second Life & Other Grids, FULL RMT. 2.) Entropia
Games with Part RMT but only benefits game company
1.) World OF Warcraft 2.) Guild Wars 2 3.) Albion Online 4.) EVE Online 5.) Arche Age 6.) Dark Fall 7.) Cross Out 8.) The Secret World 9.) FFXIV with the eternal bond ring trading.
These games have somewhat RMT exchange, In fact I wouldn't mind playing a MMORPG which only allows Item to Item Trading, and has a (Real Money Economy.) or remove trading entirely and charge 0.30 cents to trade an item in game per item real money pre-paid would cut down on china farmers / spammers, or of course a monthly subscription required to trade rather than 0.30 cents per transaction.
Landmark was going to have a store where players could buy props from other players for real money ... if I recall. Of course Landmark was not so much a mmo, but still it was moving in that direction.
I've played entropia, i'm probably down a total of $1500 - 2000 bucks. The game isn't that bad actually in my opinion. It is sandboxish but it is very difficult to make money in the game. I do play it from time to time and I think I could make money in the game if I really put all my effort into it.
The way to make money in the game that is constant but slow is by buying/selling on the market and scouring for cheap deals on bids, the problem is, the money you would make at first, would be a few dollars an hour if that.
Why would I do that when I can make $100 an hour working extra. That's the number one reason I don't do it. The other thing you could do is invest in land deeds which pays a return. If I had the money when they first came out, they were worth $100 us dollars and now they are worth $230 and not even counting the dividends.
So if you bought 100 of them at the beginning for 10k, your investment is now worth about 23k + about 14% ROI per year, so not that bad.
I do like to play the game, but what I end up doing is eventually playing for money, which kind of ruins it when I love working and that makes 100x more money than entropia.
Either way, I do like the game, I wish they advertised more and they had a bigger population. If the game had 10x the population it would be amazing. Anyway, my fall back game is Path of Exile and at some points Entropia. When I actually get paid my backpay, i may invest more and just fool around. But then again, I do that with the stock market.
Cryomatrix
Catch me streaming at twitch.tv/cryomatrix You can see my sci-fi/WW2 book recommendations.
There is no bounds to what they will do to rake it in. I would expect this to become more used as time goes by. EU was panned somewhat for this model, but what really happened was MMOs found less controversial ways of pushing the monetary model.
I have said many times, nothing is off the table when it comes to revenue models in games. It is just a matter of time.
Diablo 3 started as real money trade auction but was discontinued.
Yeh .. i remember that i made like $100 off it .. and that pays for ROS and also rise of the necromancer.
The trick was to SELL everything once the closure of RMAH was announced (it was announced like 6 months in advance). I knew that items will be worth nothing at the end, so it was a good decision to offload everything, stopped playing, and waited for ROS.
Long story short,we went all around the world to come back to the same thing,BUYING instead of immersive gaming is pay to win and does NOT facilitate an immersive game.
Once a gamer enters a gaming world,THAT should be the world and NOTHING outside that world should interfere.WHO interferes does not matter,the end result is someone or several want one thing from the game...MONEY and care less about the game than the money.
We are suppose to buy a game,that is it,no more bull shit.Devs have seen how easy people are as targets to bait them in for even more money,so they have been exploiting naive/dumb gamer's for some time now.If i is an online game that needs servers,then you have subscription fees,they are balanced,everyone pays the same,nothing ruins the game world or it's economy or the balance of the game. We USED to have most devs on board with morals,now all of them are trying to grind/exploit gamer's for as much money as they possibly can.
Never forget 3 mile Island and never trust a government official or company spokesman.
Caspian - When it comes to selling in-game items in a real-world market we effectively have two choices. We can spend countless hours and resources on trying to stop and track people making money off their in-game items, or we can accept that their time has value to them. If people have a lot of time, but little money, want to use that as a way to create in-game items which they then sell to other players who have disposable income but less free-time, we view that as a win-win.
All time classic MY NEW FAVORITE POST! (Keep laying those bricks)
"I should point out that no other company has shipped out a beta on a disc before this." - Official Mortal Online Lead Community Moderator
Proudly wearing the Harbinger badge since Dec 23, 2017.
Coined the phrase "Role-Playing a Development Team" January 2018
"Oddly Slap is the main reason I stay in these forums." - Mystichaze April 9th 2018
Long story short,we went all around the world to come back to the same thing,BUYING instead of immersive gaming is pay to win and does NOT facilitate an immersive game.
so? The question is .. is this fun? Immersiveness is really not as important as fun. Now fun is subjective. But giving how popular p2w is, i bet it is fun for the whales.
That is not the discussion we are having here. There are many, many, many, topics across this board about debating the merits of RMT. That's not the point. The point of this topic is discussing the upsides and downsides of various games that do allow RMT.
If you hate those games and none of them would interest you then I would just go to another topic or start the 5000th "I hate RMT!" topic.
Comments
Ashe Chung, who I believe was the first person to make a six-figure income from SL, is now running a virtual goods store for Shroud of the Avatar. http://www.anshex.com/shroudoftheavatar
Given the stupidity of the SotA community, the OP can probably bleed them dry in a matter of weeks.
~~ postlarval ~~
That's what I am talking about. It is implied you can make money, but not as you have worded it before. It's like seeing a casino ad saying "play on our slot machines win our big jackpots!" then accuse them of a Ponzi scheme.
And people have made money on Entropia. I know plenty of them, and they have scored big. You can say the same thing about the stock market.
You keep adding the "makes people a lot of money" part yourself, it is your personal interpretation. No one has ever said everyone can make a lot of money by playing the real estate market, how it is implied that you should make a lot by playing the virtual one?
Anyways, my point is--Entropia Universe--is in no way a Ponzi scheme. You can compare it to a bloodsucking casino, but not Charles Ponzi!
I wanted to see how profitable Entropia Universe was after it released. I realized the only thing you could do without investing money was Sweat Creatures and Sell The Sweat to people who invested money into EU. The literal USD value of sweat was pennies over hours of sweat collecting. I stopped playing at that point because it was an obvious waste of time / scam.
I later tried EU again after a tutorial system was added. The tutorial gave you a weapon, ammo, and armor -- to a new account. I went through this freebie newbie gear in 1 hour of playing, and I actually made ZERO PEDs worth of currency to continue my journey. It's obvious you're FORCED to pay to play.
I also tried cheating the system by creating 100 newbie accounts and transferring everything to a main account. After using up 100 accounts worth of guns and ammo, I made maybe 1-2 dollars worth of PEDs. (by the way, they removed the freebie gear that you used to get from the tutorial -- who knows if they added something different for new players)
Basically Entropia Universe is an incredible money drain. If I had actually purchased the equivalent amount of newbie guns/ammo that I had traded from other accounts, I would've easy spent 20+ dollars.
Entropia Universe is considered to be a casino instead of an MMORPG. You can see across the global chat when players strike a jackpot -- "Tyrannocockus Dix has dropped 50.2 PED value to John Neverdie's group on Planet Phallus!" -- and seeing this is quite rare. People believe that the developers set a calculated PED drop rate once the planet/hunting area sees enough PED flow from players.
And here's a really funny joke for a game that consists of a Real Money Economy:
If you don't login for a few years, your account gets terminated. You lose all of the money you invested into this game.
http://twitch.tv/woetothevanquished
Pretty much this. Not a Ponzi scheme. But a casino. Also you can invest on virtual real estate, and the people who have made money out of that invested serious money and worked on it for a long period of time. You can google success stories. To be honest, it's not a total awful step towards creating virtual worlds.
I personally look forward for another company creating a virtual world, with much less RNG, much less greed, and many more options for very smaller investments.
Almost all MMOs follow the format of "Find Materials -> Execute Recipe -> Timer Bar -> Finished Item"
In Wurm, making a sword would follow this model "Find Materials -> Heat Iron to Glowing Hot -> Execute Recipe -> TimerBar -> Low QL Sword -> Sharpen Low QL Sword -> Polish Low QL Sword -> Temper Low QL Sword -> Add High QL Iron to Low QL Sword -> Hammer Low QL Sword-> .......10-20 Minutes........ -> Medium QL Sword -> ...........30-40 Minutes............ -> High QL Sword -> ...........Hours at super high skill level......... -> Exceptional QL Sword"
In other words being a blacksmith =/= being a miner. Being a blacksmith = being a blacksmith. You spend long hours working your sword and produce an item of value at the end. Everything you do generates value and you can make enough money to sustain your premium actively playing most professions.
Certain professions such as being a Vynoran or Paaweelr priest with good channeling skills who does enchants generate the most value though. There is also a huge market for bricks and mortar that a lot of newbs use to break into the game.
If you are really looking for an RMT community that is not a casino I can't recommend anything higher than Wurm ATM.postlarval said:
So is SotA a game that allows RMT? Is that a real MMO / Going to be a real MMO or is more of a sever based survival game?
Also is the RMT openly allowed for all items or is it like Star Citizen's grey market?
Yeah that account termination is in their agreement, but it's not active at all. I haven't played for years and my account is still active and all my stuff is still there. At times I wish they'd remove the account though because the game is just plain awful and I'd rather not be reminded of it
Here's their official stance:
"We will not restrict exchange of goods but we will not officially endorse these exchanges due to liability issues and staffing bandwidth. All exchanges of virtual good for real dollars are to remain confined to this part of the forum ONLY. No in-game or chat based real dollar exchanges are allowed. Exchanges are at the players own risk and governed by the terms of service of whatever third party platform (eBay, PayPal, etc.) that is used. Portalarium reserves the right to restrict any activities if they cause widespread issues for our community or if these activities involve exploits of any kind."
As for it being a real MMO, I would say 'yes' although it's the most heavily instanced MMO I've ever played.
I wouldn't count on striking it rich...it probably has 200 regular people playing at the most.
~~ postlarval ~~
I'm not counting on striking it rich from RMTs. I play games primarily for the enjoyment but getting a tangible reward from your success at a hobby always helps enhance the enjoyment if you get what I mean.
At this point I'm leaning more toward RMT games purely because of awareness that none of the games on the market right now are suitable homes for me longterm, and what I do in these games will eventually be lost when I find a game that is. Building up a bit of side income helps keep me feeling like what I am doing has some meaning in the longterm. You can't take cash out of every game but you can invest cast in pretty much any game.
The plan is actually to build a longterm investment portfolio thats profits go directly into the "Gaming and Entertainment" section of my budget when I do find I game I want to play longterm.
In Shroud of the Avatar players are allowed to sell items, gold and materials for dollars, Store credits and in game gold on official forum.
It's a full mmorpg not server based, the gameplay is fantastic and skill based, so none can pay to win
They came about in the early 2000s, when there was a strong push for "social spaces". You had hundreds of social hub games popping up. Most of these were glorified chat rooms, with little content and no RMT. I think the interaction between people and online social platforms was still unexplored - people were trying to figure out what online spaces are all about. There was this notion that online worlds are little universes similar to the real one, where people can create tangible things separate to the real world.
As a result, people saw a lot of value in each separate virtual space. If people were going to "migrate" parts of their real life into a virtual space, it made a lot of sense to try and own these virtual areas. I'd argue RMT games were a direct outcome of this train of thought. If you see a virtual island as an equivalent of a real island, it makes a lot of sense to buy it for $100.000+. You see the virtual activity on the island (renting property, people killing virtual animals, etc.) as the way to recoup your investment.
Today, the environment is very different. I think our notion of virtual worlds has evolved. People generally see virtual spaces as extensions of the real world, not as completely separate entities. The communities are a lot more transient - people are less attached to individual products. You also see overarching identities, such as a Steam username or even Facebook, which let you link all your virtual games into one place. In turn, games are more seen as an experience, rather than a tangible space. This is not to say things like character development don't have place in games anymore - I'm just saying there is a subtle change in the way we perceive the worlds we interact with.
All of this has implications on RMT games today. If you view virtual spaces as an entertainment service, it makes less sense to purchase an island for $100.000, aiming to recoup the investment through gameplay. Instead, it makes a lot more sense to invest $100.000 on a broader level, aiming to recoup the investment through the service itself. Essentially, you are investing $100.000 in strengthening your virtual "brand", which then allows you to make a return on the investment. An example of this would be purchasing a virtual island as a person, getting a 20% revenue share from any micro-transaction happening on the island. This is in contrast to purchasing an island, getting dinosaur teeth loot you then exchange back for money.
RMT models will have to reflect this change. I loved both Second Life and Entropia, so I see this shift as an interesting promise. I think we will see a new kind of payment model in the near future, one that leverages the fact that games are an entertainment service. This could result in SecondLife-like games, where the people themselves are a lot more involved in forming broader connections with others, beyond just selling virtual items in a virtual shop.
EQ1, EQ2, SWG, SWTOR, GW, GW2 CoH, CoV, FFXI, WoW, CO, War,TSW and a slew of free trials and beta tests
I highly believe allowing RMT on a massively populated MMORPG, such as Eve Online, would make people take the game more seriously. And would create more world PvP. Botting should not be legal, but so many people will be out there farming, it will create tons of pvp action and gankers and guild pvp.
Purchasing virtual goods with your money will not be expensive, neither will it be non-existent of a price. It will generally be pretty dirt cheap / cheap, and will always follow a market price of supply + demand.
As mmorpg's always work, you can generally ALWAYS make more virtual currency in game of working at a minimum wage job flipping burgers and using that to RMT purchase, rather than trying to self farm in game.
1.) Second Life & Other Grids, FULL RMT.
2.) Entropia
Games with Part RMT but only benefits game company
1.) World OF Warcraft
2.) Guild Wars 2
3.) Albion Online
4.) EVE Online
5.) Arche Age
6.) Dark Fall
7.) Cross Out
8.) The Secret World
9.) FFXIV with the eternal bond ring trading.
These games have somewhat RMT exchange, In fact I wouldn't mind playing a MMORPG which only allows Item to Item Trading, and has a (Real Money Economy.) or remove trading entirely and charge 0.30 cents to trade an item in game per item real money pre-paid would cut down on china farmers / spammers, or of course a monthly subscription required to trade rather than 0.30 cents per transaction.
Probably it can be a new trend for RMT in games.
"I am my connectome" https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=HA7GwKXfJB0
The way to make money in the game that is constant but slow is by buying/selling on the market and scouring for cheap deals on bids, the problem is, the money you would make at first, would be a few dollars an hour if that.
Why would I do that when I can make $100 an hour working extra. That's the number one reason I don't do it. The other thing you could do is invest in land deeds which pays a return. If I had the money when they first came out, they were worth $100 us dollars and now they are worth $230 and not even counting the dividends.
So if you bought 100 of them at the beginning for 10k, your investment is now worth about 23k + about 14% ROI per year, so not that bad.
I do like to play the game, but what I end up doing is eventually playing for money, which kind of ruins it when I love working and that makes 100x more money than entropia.
Either way, I do like the game, I wish they advertised more and they had a bigger population. If the game had 10x the population it would be amazing. Anyway, my fall back game is Path of Exile and at some points Entropia. When I actually get paid my backpay, i may invest more and just fool around. But then again, I do that with the stock market.
Cryomatrix
You can see my sci-fi/WW2 book recommendations.
I have said many times, nothing is off the table when it comes to revenue models in games. It is just a matter of time.
Once a gamer enters a gaming world,THAT should be the world and NOTHING outside that world should interfere.WHO interferes does not matter,the end result is someone or several want one thing from the game...MONEY and care less about the game than the money.
We are suppose to buy a game,that is it,no more bull shit.Devs have seen how easy people are as targets to bait them in for even more money,so they have been exploiting naive/dumb gamer's for some time now.If i is an online game that needs servers,then you have subscription fees,they are balanced,everyone pays the same,nothing ruins the game world or it's economy or the balance of the game.
We USED to have most devs on board with morals,now all of them are trying to grind/exploit gamer's for as much money as they possibly can.
Never forget 3 mile Island and never trust a government official or company spokesman.
https://www.bing.com/videos/search?q=Gowron+and+Quark&&view=detail&mid=488903DA1C96358C40C7488903DA1C96358C40C7&rvsmid=46171789AFD74EF9639346171789AFD74EF96393&FORM=VDQVAP
The world is going to the dogs, which is just how I planned it!
Caspian - When it comes to selling in-game items in a real-world market we effectively have two choices. We can spend countless hours and resources on trying to stop and track people making money off their in-game items, or we can accept that their time has value to them. If people have a lot of time, but little money, want to use that as a way to create in-game items which they then sell to other players who have disposable income but less free-time, we view that as a win-win.
All time classic MY NEW FAVORITE POST! (Keep laying those bricks)
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That is not the discussion we are having here. There are many, many, many, topics across this board about debating the merits of RMT. That's not the point. The point of this topic is discussing the upsides and downsides of various games that do allow RMT.
If you hate those games and none of them would interest you then I would just go to another topic or start the 5000th "I hate RMT!" topic.