Real World Item Trading: The Crack Down
Posted by Duke Freedom on 04-May-2007 at 13:00
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Over the past year various top of the art merchants and superior stakers have been banned due to breakage of the rule that forbids the trading of ingame items for real life money and / or services. How bad is this so-called Real World Item Trading (more commonly called Real Money Trading) for the game that Jagex perceives it as such a necessity to have it against the rules and that Jagex sees the need to enforce it with an iron fist? In this article I will explore the positive effects, the negative effects, the many misconceptions surrounding Real Money Trading and the reasons for the existence of Real Money Trading.
Note: This editorial explores the issues surrounding Rule 12 regarding Real World Item Trading. However, we want to emphasize that all RuneScape rules are to be followed at all times and Rule 12 currently prohibits Real World Item Trading for in game items.
Reasons people do it
In essence, the ‘demand’ for the Real Money Trading service in online games comes from the need to ‘grind’ for levels. This ‘grinding’ means that players have to spend tens or hundreds of hours doing exactly the same thing over and over again in order to advance their character to the next level of a skill. In comparison to other games, the amount of grinding that one needs to do in RuneScape is among the worst around.
Many players, especially older, working men around the age of 30, perceive this massive grinding as very unpleasant. They simply don’t have the time, motivation or interest to smith over 300,000 steel bars just to gain level 99 smithing. They oftenly have busy jobs in real life and therefore demand quality time from their online experience. Likewise, they don’t want to be killing goblins in the goblin village for the rest of their RuneScape lifetime just because they don’t have the time to ever get past that ‘newbie’ stage.
In a typical situation these people may earn some $30 / hour with their real life job, which, for example, could buy them many times more gp in RuneScape then what they would be able to gather themselves in one day. From a merely efficient point of view, it makes sense that these people are interested in doing so - especially because their time is scarce and valuable to them.
On the other side we have college kids and students around the age of 20 who have plenty of free time on their hands to play these games. It is no secret that most of the players who show up on the top 20 skill total list belong in this group, as do most excelling merchants and stakers. An everlasting problem this group suffers from is a permanent lack of money though. Whether it is to fund their study, books or spare time spending - they never seem to have enough money for what they need, want or dream of. It is no surprise that when these people find out that they can actually earn money from their leisure activity of playing online games, they are usually quite interested.
No there is nothing immoral about it
Above descriptions of typical and genuine buyers and sellers of virtual currency are merely examples though. While the examples probably helped you gain compassion and understanding about why people trade virtual currency, they don’t tell you whether it is moral to do so. I say there is nothing immoral about it though and I think you’ll figure that out as well if you ask yourself the right questions. First, ask yourself the question: Is there anything wrong with selling a service that you can provide or is there anything wrong about buying a service from someone who can provide it to you? Ok, the answer to that seems obvious, there’s nothing fundamentally wrong with trading services.
Now ask yourself the following: Is RuneScape a competitive game where complete equality matters so much that without it the game wouldn’t be any fun to play? Is it like a game of chess, monopoly, StarCraft or Counter-Strike where you directly compete with the other players in the game? Or is it more like real life where you ‘compete’ with other people but not in such a direct sense as your actions essentially don’t matter that much? In other words, does RuneScape resemble more of a ‘Virtual World’? If your answer to this last question is yes then I cannot see how you’d be able to think that there’s something immoral about Real Money Trading. If you think that the game is actually a Virtual World then you should also agree that the purpose of it is that everyone enjoys it and that it's not about who leads the highscores list - thus it doesn’t matter to you whether that person next to you bought his achievements or not.
If your answer was no then you apparently think that RuneScape is more like a chess game, where complete equality matters. But games like RuneScape don’t have such equality at all? Someone who starts playing the game nowadays has to compete with people who have been playing since 2001 and who have extremely high levelled accounts compared to your level 3 newb. Besides, didn’t it ever catch your attention that several million people play this game and that it therefore resembles much more of a Virtual World?
So what is really the fundamental difference between a game like monopoly and RuneScape? Why would it 'ruin' the game so much if people bought monopoly money, while that is not true for RuneScape? Apart from the fact that board games like monopoly are played with only a few players, where each player has significant impact on the game, unlike RuneScape, games like monopoly have clearly defined starting and ending conditions as well. Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Games promote themselves by calling themselves persistent worlds, which actually confirms the fact that these games are much more Virtual Worlds than "just a game". There is no starting 'condition' (most people join these games while they have been around for several years already) and there are certainly no end conditions either - the 'game' is what you make of it and most people play it in different ways.
The stance of game companies and Sony Entertainment’s Experiment
Sadly most of the game companies somehow seem to have huge issues with the allowance of Real Money Trading anyway and therefore have it against the rules. They claim the allowance devalues the game for other players as it would be “unfair” towards those who don’t participate in it and that “it is not in the spirit of the game”. Many players who, in my opinion, have been more or less brainwashed by the extremely negative opinions of the game companies even proceed to state that “it would ruin the game’s economy” and that “they would quit the game if it was allowed”.
Therefore I can only congratulate Sony Entertainment for actually having the guts to be open to the world of Real Money Trading in their game EverQuest II by running an ‘experiment’ on it. Sony realized that the (black) market of Real Money Trading is not just an annoying evil that should be fought, but that it actually points out a weak aspect in these games - the massive grinding that some people really want to evade, but can’t because it is a fundamental aspect of these games.
Sony came with the most logical and easy solution, introducing specific Real Money Trading allowed and disallowed servers. This way, those who do or don’t want to participate in Real Money Trading can choose to do so. Sony also provided a secure trading system for those who want to participate in Real Money Trading, addressing the nasty scamming issues that terrorize the black market. Ofcourse, Sony thought of itself as well, by asking small listing and transaction fees from those who want to sell items through their system.
But Sony didn’t stop there and actually proceeded to research the results of their ‘experiment’ with Real Money Trading on EverQuest II. Everyone who is interested in the results of their 12-month study can read them here. Among various things that I have already mentioned earlier in this article, their study clearly shows that the allowance of Real Money Trading did not ruin the games economy at all. Nor did the game loose its popularity to it. In fact, many people are funding their game subscription from the sale of virtual items. Sony calls the ‘experiment’ a success and has stated that it will continue to consider its possibilities regarding Real Money Trading. Apparently they don’t consider Real Money Trading to be as ‘threatening’ anymore, now that they actually considered the facts.
And why not - I strongly believe it would be mistake to do otherwise. Sony’s study also showed that it will take place whether it is allowed or not anyway. In fact, experts in the field even believe that the market for virtual items will overcome the market of subscription income from online games - projected to be $7 billion by 2009 - in the next few years.
Back to Jagex
Throughout the past years I have seen Jagex make too many strong statements against Real Money Trading to believe or even hope that Jagex would ever change its policies, which is a shame in my opinion. Jagex is not even open to any discussion about it at all if you ask me.
Looking at the news item they published at the start of this month, it does seem that they are slowly realizing that the autoers are much more of an issue than the individual merchants, stakers and virtual currency buyers though. Unlike the Real Money Trading done by the latter group, autoers themselves do effect the games economy. Admitted, most macroers only macro to resell the gold they earn for real money. However, a frequent mistake that people make here is that macroing itself is already against the rule. Defending the rule against Real Money Trading with the argument that many autoers do it is nothing more than a logical fallacy.
The battle between Jagex and the autoers is a never-ending story and that won’t ever change. All that Jagex can really do is continuously enhance their detection systems and hope that it’ll delay the autoers for a long time. Eventually the autoers will always come back with new sophisticated programs that somehow get around the new detection systems though, at which point Jagex will have to start working on better detection systems again. And so on.
The Chinese farmers are more problematic though. As Jagex rightly mentions, the Chinese farmers have no interest in the game and have nothing to loose - it will also be much harder to ‘detect’ these “players” than autoers.
Jagex says that they’ll be going to crack down HARD on people who break rule 12 and while I have reason to believe that they mean it, I also question their ability to do so regarding autoers and mostly Chinese farmers. The previous time Jagex reminded people of the no Real Money Trading rule, on 24 February 2006, the massive banning of top players who were involved in it actually followed within a few months. However, this time Jagex ‘opponents’, the Chinese farmers, are in much larger numbers. I guess the near future will tell us if Jagex is able to actually deal with them or not.
Conclusion
I found it remarkable that Jagex specifically stated that the Chinese farmers have no interest in playing the game. Doesn’t Jagex realize that the Real Money Trading students and working men are oftenly quite loyal players in opposite? Aren’t they able to observe that their transactions don’t have any negative effect on the game - unlike the autoers and the Chinese farmers?
I have no doubts that Jagex will always continue to ban these players too, especially as they are much easier to catch than the autoers and the Chinese farmers, but I think it would be wise if Jagex actually questioned itself about the morality of doing so, because I don’t believe this group causes any harm to the game at all. Ofcourse you’d still have to separate the ‘genuine’ Real Money Trading players from the Chinese farmers somehow then, but that’s a whole different topic.
Don't get me wrong though. While I do strongly disagree with Jagex choice to ban loyal players who are able to make some nice bucks of their game by just 'playing the game', and those who are wanting to skip part of the 'grinding' aspect of the game, I am certainly *NOT* encouraging any of you to go do it despite it being against the rules.
As I said earlier in this article already, I would say Jagex has made a clear and strong stance on this, which has to be respected. What you can do however, is try to convince Jagex that there is nothing wrong with those who want to Real Money Trade for genuine reasons. I know that many more people would want it to be allowed for genuine reasons, but that group just doesn't seem to be very vocal. Ironically, loyal players are rarely vocal.
Comments
who plays posted on 04-May-2007 15:06
Very Good article, well written, good info, controversial topic *TIFs applaus emote*.
But I still think your financal position shouldn't interfere with your RS game play. Because, what's the point of having a rare, 99 con, etc. if you would know someone who has some money in real life could easily afford it, with actually very little effort (RS is hardly worth anything for dollars). I really wonder whether rares would still be a status symbol if you could buy RS gold or not. (And you have said plenty times rares are an important factor of the RS economy.)
I only have one other comment; while reading it I had the feeling you wrote this article to justify your own real world trading.
Skatedog111 posted on 04-May-2007 15:26
I don't think this topic is meant to imply anyone here breaks rule 12, and it'll cause flame anyway>.>.
Good article like usual, however i think RuneScape has a different economy then everquest II does, and so i think that real world trading would affect RuneScape by the rares aspect of the market. If rares were to be bought with ilegally obtained money, many buyers would not turn to the original ways to buy rares, and probably leading to a raw material shortage, and prices going up, or some kind of chain reaction, i just thought of this as i wrote, so its not creditable.
Duke Freedom posted on 05-May-2007 00:29
As expected - people continue to focus on what would happen if some people spend much money on the game. As Sony's Experiment showed, there are very few people who would spend much money on the game. Most people would stick to an amount around the $60 on yearly basis. Such a low amount can't possibly effect the prices of rares or, for example, increase the amount of 99 constructors.
Most people who buy virtual currency do it in order to buy relatively basic equipment and such. Sure, there will be extremely rare occasions of people buying masses of gold, but the game's market is large enough to remain unaffected by a few of such people. Besides, I still do not understand why it'd effect you whether that guy next to you has bought his party hat or not, obviously it stays a status symbol either way, because it is extremely expensive. Do you not consider a porsche to be a status symbol in real life either? Obviously the guy who has it "just bought it" as well - except that the "just bought it" is not as easy as it sounds.
Furthermore, Jagex themself claimed to ban 6bil gp per week - Real Money Trading already happens on an extremely large scale, despite it being against the rules. However, that also means that the supposively negative effects of Real Money Trading already effect the game as well -> yet we aren't able to observe any negative effects of this.
As Sony's Experiment also showed, it is therefore unlikely that the amount of Real Money Trading would increase much if Jagex actually removed it from the Rules of Conduct.
Ltje posted on 05-May-2007 03:52
Quite a good article.
Allthough I still don't agree with one point:
You promote RLmoney trading, with pretty good arguments I must say. But when it comes to the point, on what effects it could have on the RuneScape environment with a "but that’s a whole different topic."
While your arguments are pretty good for MMORPG's in general, I don't see it working in RuneScape, because you promote autoers and chinese goldfarmers in an indirect way.
You compared RS to EQII for example, but EQII has one BIG difference, it cost a lot of money to play. And RS is free to play, and therefore autoer's heaven. Thus making it for lots of people who don't consider playing RS normal a pretty interesting idea to simply start autoing. The autoer is easy and free to download, getting banned doesn't matter because you don't even consider normal playing, and the cash can roll in.
So basically I agree with you that it could work in RuneScape, IF Jagex makes it MUCH harder to macro.
Duke Freedom posted on 05-May-2007 08:15
Ltje wrote:
"But when it comes to the point, on what effects it could have on the RuneScape environment with a "but that’s a whole different topic."
That part was about how to differentiate between Chinese farmers and legitimate, genuine players, which is a difficult issue, but I really didn't/don't want to address that here. Throughout the rest of the article I already pointed out, the allowance of Real Money Trading would not effect RuneScape's environment much - it already takes place on a large scale anyway.
For the rest I'm not "promoting" autoers and Chinese farmers - and I also admitted that both of them do have an effect on the game's economy. However, autoers fall under a different rule, which forbids autoing in the first place and thus I don't see the need to address that issue in the light of Real Money Trading. Autoers are an ongoing issue in RuneScape, with or without RMTing.
bambino posted on 05-May-2007 08:42
This was an interesting read, you dare to express a point of view that some may agree on, but few feel comfortable talking about. Nothing but respect for that, and your writing skills
.
However, I somewhere disagree. You wave off the issue of autoers, as if they are not significant in the problem at hand. To me that's quite unacceptable. RL money trading in general is an OK feature for a MMORPG, it works without it, but there's no reason why it shouldn't work with it. However, in the case of Runescape; Jagex is simply obliged to forbid it until they get the autoer problem under control. Sure, it falls under a different rule, but that doesn't mean that autoing has no influence on RL money trading...
Think about it, someone who gets a good autoer can easily earn quite some good RS money, before he/she gets caught and banned, if he/she gets caught at all; all that without actually performing an effort. It would be earning RS money, in an illegal way, since the game is not designed that way, and the virtual law forbids it. I'm sure you agree up to here? So, if those autoers make the step to RL money trading, they will have earned quite a bit of RL money, by performing illegal actions in a game. Do you think those specific individuals, who make money without contributing effort in an illegal way, should not be punished?
All I'm saying is that as long as Jagex can't control the autoer problem, they will never be able to allow RL money trading, out of ethical consideration. And they have the bad luck, that they have to develop a detection system against a very advanced set of autoers. And they update it every few months, giving the autoers far to little time to get accustomed, therefore the illegal programs are renewed every few months as well, and are able to keep up the pace with Jagex. Any other game has the advantage of releasing it without anyone ever being able to create an autoer for it before. And then when the first are made, after a few months, the developper most likely can create updates before the autoer spreads. You might say that Jagex is always a step behind on the autoer, and it's unlikely that they will ever catch up, because now the base of illegal activity has already been set.
That's why I am quite sure, that there won't be RL trading in RS in the near future. However, I support it for other games, with well thought-through systems.
Blackxp posted on 05-May-2007 11:05
Very Good article, actualy was randomly checking out this site about the stat look up thing and saw editorials and saw you. Main reason i registered, i enjoyed your tip.it articles alot. And looked up all of yours here also.
Very good stuff, and I agree.
Just a quick comment, and i dont want to anger you if you are still somewhat mad about the issue. But werent you banned quite a while back for this same basic issue?
Everyone in rs hears the gossip of how some high level player was banned. You with your huge sum of rares for real world trading, and cursed you for what i heard to be scamming.
But I heard it was for college and directly saw that discussed in your article. I think the gossip or whatever said you were paying for college. Always respected you for that. I do agree there are some legit reasons to real world trade as pointed out in the article, but i was always against it. Thinking the prices of rares would skyrocket, and the price to buy a stat would jump also. Being a skiller and doing that on mulitple account would be somewhat bad.
But if what you say is true and no change would occur, then i highly support it. I trust alot of your judgement and you seem to be very very educated on the issue.
I just dont know how as a loyal player i could push this subject on jagex. posting this idea on the forums of rs would only get it taken off or them mad at you lol. hate to be forum banned =\. Just a little insight on how this idea could be pushed would be nice. Cause i support.
Duke Freedom posted on 05-May-2007 15:32
To bambino: Apparently I gave the wrong impression by saying that the issue of autoing is not a valid reason to be against Real Money Trading, even though my arguement does boil down to that in the end.
I am certainly not saying autoing is not an issue. Autoing IS a big / huge issue, it's actually one of the worst problems Jagex has to deal with. I want it to be completely clear that I am 100% against autoing and completely agree with Jagex stance considering that.
What I AM saying however, is that those who macro already break rule 7 (macroing) and thus can already be punished under rule 7. Whether they also break rule 12 (Real Money Trading), which undeniably many autoers do break indeed, is not so important in my opinion. Breakage of rule 7 already deserves the highest possible punishment one can possibly get.
Do you really think any of those who macro to sell the game currency for real money actually care whether they break one rule (rule 7) or two rules (rule 7 and rule 12)? No they don't.
So essentially and in my opinion, rule 12 does nothing to stop macroing, yet it does remove the ability to trade virtual currency for those who want to do so legimitately (i.e. without breaking rule 7: macroing or any other rule for that sake). I do not find it moral to have rules that let the 'good' suffer due to the 'bad' - especially when it barely helps fighting the 'bad'.
You do have a point that RuneScape is not very "macroing-proof", meaning that, compared to other MMO's, it is relatively easy for the bot creators to develop bots for RuneScape. While Jagex has had some minor victories versus autoers throughout the history, the bot creators sadly eventually develop new and sophisticated bots that get around Jagex detection mechanisms. As I said, it's an ongoing battle, which I don't think will never be completely won by either side. Jagex does have to continue it's efforts to keep autoing limited as much as they can.
To Blackxp and others who have mentioned it:
Yes I was banned over a year ago for rule 12 and no I am not mad towards Jagex that they choose to do so, as it is only consistent with their current rules. That said, this article is in no way meant as a justification for what I did. I therefore do not wish to discuss my own personal circumstances any further as I consider it unrelated to this discussion.
My reasons for writing this article are simple: I believe there is a huge amount of false truths and misconceptions surrounding the issue of whether Real Money Trading should be allowed or not and I hope to have taken some of them away with this article. People wrongly believe that allowance of Real Money Trading would have desastrous effects on the game's economy, player population and popularity. All of that is simply not true. Furthermore, I personally don't believe that there is anything morally wrong about Real Money Trading - but ofcourse it is still against the rules and therefore shouldn't be done by anyone.
Discussion and removing misconceptions is the first step that should be executed if you want to change things and convince people, including Jagex, that you're right and that there is nothing wrong with Real Money Trading. Jagex does sometimes read what people write on fansites and Jagex might take the time to listen to the arguments of those who disagree with the Real Money Trading rule when they notice that many people seem to do so.
What those who share my view can do in the meanwhile is to make sure that more people are educated on the actualy facts about Real Money Trading. As I said, misconceptions surrounding it are rampant, including the misconception that most people are against Real Money Trading. There are actually enough people who think it's OK, but most of them are just affraid for defending the controversial opinion that they think Real Money Trading is OK - considering that is still strongly frowned upon.
Posting about it on the official RuneScape forums is not a good idea, because you are not allowed to discuss rules there. I'm not sure whether you are allowed to send a support query regarding rules; you'd need to look up on that if you really wanted to.
Nathaninch posted on 08-May-2007 19:45
You've got me convinced Duke.
I totally did a 180.
Wilhuf posted on 10-May-2007 05:26
You forgot something: only people who wanted to participate in that experiment did so. In other words, it doesn't reflect the whole community of Everquest II and definitely not the whole RuneScape player base.
I'm sure that someone who buys or sells GP wouldn't see anything wrong with real world item trading. And it might not completely ruin the game's economy.
But it will certainly cheapen the game and take away a lot of what this game is about. You state that many people buy GP so they don't have to do hours of mindless grinding.
Then why play RuneScape in the first place? If you don't like grinding you should really start playing another game or stay low levelled and just play mini games, do quests, etc. These take very little grinding and are fun.
The only reason you'd want to mind numbingly grind for XP in RS is because you like the feeling you get when you achieve a certain level, or when you can make a new awesome item, kill a new exciting monster, or whatever. But if you would buy the items needed to level up, there would be no challenge and no feeling of achievement.
Besides taking away your own enjoyment of the game, you would also take away other's. Because ranks, expensive items, levels, quests, fire capes, and other things wouldn't mean anything anymore.
Now, if this would be done on separate servers, I'd have no problem with it. I would probably make an account myself on the new servers, just out of curiosity and maybe I'd even make some money. I can see your point there.
Unknowable posted on 11-May-2007 06:28
I'm sure I don't want to play on a RL trading server, and many with me don't want it either. That problem already was solved by Sony with Everquest.
Servers where it is possible, and servers where it isn't.
Also, Jagex could charge a little bit of money for a transaction and banish all internet traders. However, this breaks Jagex' policy of "all servers the same". If an exception is made, then there won't be any communicating between servers anymore, except for the chat. This would cause the economy to split, having a large effect on it.
Nice article by the way
Iantiger posted on 11-May-2007 08:51
Great article as always. You've left me in no-man's land in regards to the issue of real world item/money trading. On the one hand you do put your case across exceptionally well, and perhaps if I wasn't a brainwashed victim I might be inclined to completely agree with you =P
Firstly, I think that IF it is legalised (but as you say, I can't see that ever happening with Jagex, they seem to have made their mind up and that's that)... then I think there should be a cap on the amount of trading a player can do per week, per month, or what have you. Since you suggest the average a player might spend would be $60/year, then maybe the cap should be $100/year. This would stop rich-kids buying RS gold to buy their way into the rares market, or just buying themselves lots of 99 skills, something that many other people work very hard for.
Secondly, there should be a cap on playing time. I know a lot of people are against this, but I honestly believe it will help to combat the large number of kids who have their social lives swalled up by online gaming (and let's not kid ourselves here, there are a LOT of RuneScape players who fit that description), or at the very least give them a chance to diversify and play different games if they so choose to do so. Also, if there is a money cap, coupled with a real world trading cap, the east asian gold-farmers will suddenly lose interest as it becomes very difficult to make the huge profits they would otherwise be raking in.
These ideas probably need some more thought. The one fatal flaw in my trading-cap is HOW? I have no ideas yet as to how RS can a) Monitor a real world item trade and distinguish it from a regular trade, perhaps some sort of equality system where the value of each side of the trade must be very close, but this would require a fluctuating price database which would need to be kept constantly updated... Okay, so my idea's not plausible without immense research.... =D
i_D_r posted on 12-May-2007 22:24
Hi there, first time really checking out the site, lol
I may sound like a Marxist (bleh always say that like its a bad thing, damn acculturation) but the reason why it kills the spirit of the game is because real world trading is a savvy way to kill 'net neutrality'- in effect, the capital successes of real life are intervening in the ideal world of a particular mmorpg during RWT. Thus killing the equivocal rights the ideal characters have in these games; rich people in RL are able to dominate reality as it is, and by letting RWT going on they dominate in virtual worlds too.
Point is, this is what Jagex is referring to fundamentally when they say it kills the spirit of the game.
However I will say users that do RWT are typically spreading out their RL wealth, which is a good thing since a very small amount of people own most of the wealth.
Look at any developed country, and there is an apparent trend of a modern unregulated capitalist society.
I'd say the EQ xp was a success because the people who wanted to make money or spend money played with eachother, and people who didn't played with eachother. Everyone was happy.
Immoral? Na, food on the table for exploited chinese farmers and money for books is much more important than a game.
Turbo posted on 13-May-2007 09:31
well written article. I agree with most of your points, but I do think that you miss out on a huge drawback. There is a current established exchange rate for GP and $. It is easily trackable on the internet, and will hold up to an IRS income audit.
By making real world trading legal, you will force the IRS, or any tax authority (they will all follow the IRS' lead I assure you), to tax any capital gains made from playing RS. Income is income, no matter where it comes from or how long it takes to acquire.
The second and probably the main reason why it is banned, is that RS would be flirting gambling laws. For example, someone who gets a left half of a shield could sell that for 1.5mil. I clicked the first link in a google search of Runescape gold to find that 1mil is $5.99. So in effect that left half is about $9. No tax authority cares if it took you one day or 1,000 days to get that item. They care about taxable income. Financially it would be difficult to make a living off RS, but there are quite a few people who are doing just that. The randomness of drops looks a whole lot like straight flush on a casino gambling machine.
In China alone (excluding autoers and sweat shops of course), making 300k an hour would be the same as a $2 an hour job. Playing RS for 40 hours a week would be a very nice income. A hard core high level who had a decent team to go to the Dagganoth kings and solo kill them (2 ppl 2 kings) all day can easily make over 2mil an hour. 'Work' 40 hours at the grind, then play.
-Kama
Fredz posted on 14-May-2007 13:28
I find this article pretty biased.
Maybe it is wort noting when you write a article like this that you actually got banned from RS from real world trading (If I'm not mistaken?)
You argue that a old person with job and kids that have less time to play the game should be able to buy his way trough the game -because- he don't have as much time to play the game as others. Now is it just me or can that argument be used for macroing as well. Macroing should be allowed because some people don't have as much time on their hands as others.
No, I think Runescape is a game. And it should be played like it is. No real world interfering.
I believe sony's move is a bad move. They don't want to spend money on hiring personnel to enforce the "No real world interfering" rule, so they don't care. They open their own shop so they can earn a quick buck themselves.
Sony's main interest is to earn money
JageX wants to earn money too. But they also want to make a fair platform for everyone that plays the game. They respect the time people put into the game, and don't support others to get instant fame and glory without playing the game the way it is supposed to be played. Not bought.
Thats my word on this topic.
piiscool posted on 16-May-2007 11:30
Well done. Your article was well thought out, and very nicely presented.
I do however feel something was left out. There are actually 3 categories of real world trading: buying RuneScape gold, buying RuneScape items, and buying RuneScape accounts. The first two are completely linked as there is an entirely legal in-game market for trading rs gold for rs items. The 3rd category is different, and imo the most troubling. Even if someone buys rs gold, they still have to grind to get xp. They just don't have to merchanting or other non-xp giving tasks to earn money to support grinding. But when a person buys an entire account, they are taking credit for hundreds or thousands of hours in-game which he/she did not actually spend time doing.
If you can, duke, I'd like you tyo address this issue.
P.S. despite the quality of your arguements, I'm not convinced making rwt legal would not increase the frequency of rwt. Thus it would have a major effect on the rs economy, not ruining it, but vastly warping it.
Duke Freedom posted on 16-May-2007 13:29
You're mentioning a nice discussion point there, piiscool. Although this article was mostly written with the allowance of Item / Gold trading in mind, I would say the arguements for allowance of Account would be roughly the same overall as the point remains that it is done to skip grinding. For the note, the general referring of "Real Money Trading" actually also includes Account trading.
However, I completely agree with you that Account trading is essentially one step further than Item / Gold trading. Item / Gold trading could be considered the "weak" form of Real Money Trading, because it allows people to skip a certain part of grinding, but still forces them to do some / a lot of grinding, especially to reach the higher levels in skills. This somewhat ensures that high skill levels remain only for those who play the game quite intensively, while at the same time also allowing some Real Money Trading to skip some grinding aspects to exist.
Account trading could be considered the "strong" form of Real Money Trading, because it would completely remove the need for grinding at all, if wanted (and paid for, ofcourse).
From the several research papers I have read on Real Money Trading, I believe to recall that Account trading takes place on a smaller scale than Item / Gold trading. Accounts are supposively traded at discount too, if we consider the huge amounts of time that are spend to get high levels in skills.
I believe there were a variety of reasons for that, including that buying an Account has the downside of not being able to give it the name you want, not knowing the complete history of the Account and not having played the Account from the beginning. Many of those who Real Money Trade still prefer to have gotten the skills on their account 'themselves'.
On the selling side there is also a reason why Accounts are sold at a discount: people who completely loose interest in the MMO oftenly don't care what happens to their character anymore and therefore "cash out" by selling their Accounts. This ensures a relatively high amount of supply of Account leading to the discount.
I want to repeat that I'm talking a bit on to what I believe to remember from some research papers I read, so I'm not 100% sure. Also, where I said that the market for Accounts is smaller, I just mean "in comparison to the market of Item / Gold". The market itself may be quite large still.
piiscool wrote
"I'm not convinced making rwt legal would not increase the frequency of rwt"
Well what it simply means is that the current existing black market already has the size that the market would have it were within the rules. I mostly base myself on the results of Sony's research on that, which concludes this. While I believe Sony's research to be quite reliable, it is obviously no hard prove that it would be the same for RuneScape (although I have no reason to believe why it would be any different).
piiscool posted on 16-May-2007 21:19
"I'm not convinced making rwt legal would not increase the frequency of rwt"
I was speaking primarily from my own experience, in that i will never buy currency for real money because of rule 12, and the chance of getting banned, If it were allowed however, i would do so in a heartbeat. I'm sure that I'm not the only one who falls into this category, and if I am, or if we are a minority, then there is little support for actually removing rule 12.
Duke Freedom posted on 17-May-2007 00:46
"I'm sure that I'm not the only one who falls into this category, and if I am, or if we are a minority, then there is little support for actually removing rule 12."
Well, the sad truth is that those who want to do it, oftenly already do it, despite it being against the rules (obviously those people would want the rule removed though). Perhaps read this bit on that:
http://www.nickyee.com/daedalus/archives/001469.php
On the other hand the following survery seems to contradict a bit with that and agrees more with your point that more people would do it if it were allowed:
http://www.nickyee.com/daedalus/archives/000196.php
If any of you have the time and interest, here are some other peoples elaborated thoughts (both pro and con) on RMT too:
http://www.nickyee.com/daedalus/archives/000861.php?page=1
NightBro2 posted on 18-May-2007 15:41
Well, its an interesting article, and interesting comments as well. It seems that a few ppl feel that RWT is "ok" as long as it is done for a "moral" reason.
for all the honest players of the game to obtain their resurces and exp. It also drives the street price of these materials down, so that "honest" players do not recieve a fair return on their time/effort. As for selling accounts, don't even go there, the vast majority of accounts offered "for sale" are stolen/hacked accounts that have been raided are then "sold" by the person who stole them. Any reputable player who has worked to get an account built up (skills/items etc) also has a reputation. No honest person would want a stranger using that name and possibly harming that reputation, so would be unlikely to sell it.
Yes, some ppl do it to pay for college. In order to get significant amounts of money from this, they would have to either a)play the game 24/7.....or b)use macros.
If they are playing 24/7, I suggest they get a real life job instead! It would pay better, and be "legal" under Jagex rules. If they are using macros....then they are breaking more than one rule and no amount of arguments can justify their actions (in my opinion)
"Older guys in their 30" who have demands of family, job etc and don't have time to "grind" most likely don't buy much RS gold anyway -hopefully they are mature enough to not need instant gratification.
I would expect the majority of RS gold is sold to "kids" who are buying it for "self esteem" issues. They "need" the expensive items to feel good about themselves because that seems to be the trend now. Unfortunately, the "gp factories" are able to exploit this. They use large teams of low paid "workers" who "grind" for hours each day in shifts to compte for resources. This makes it more difficult (and more of a "grind"
No matter who is doing real world trades, and no matter what their justification, it boils down to a cheat and I am behind Jagex's efforts to rid the game of this factor.
Burta posted on 30-Jun-2007 02:12
Awesome article. I really enjoyed it and the comments thus far have also been really interesting and insightful as well. Rather than post all my thoughts here - I have posted them on my blog which include how I feel Jagex should solve the problem black market trading of gold:
Solving The Gold Selling Problem - http://www.rshaven.com/solving-the-RuneScape-gold-selling-problem/
Also I recently looked into the issue and it would appear that despite Jagex best efforts they are not winning the fight against RWT:
Upward Trend of Gold Selling - http://www.rshaven.com/upward-trend-of-buying-RuneScape-gold/
cjcapta posted on 28-Aug-2007 15:52
What is a Chinese Farmer?
r36157r4710n posted on 21-Sep-2007 16:58
A laughable article. Sounds to me like you're still feeling the sting of your own ban for RWIT, and this is your attempt to rationalize that behavior. I especially liked your claim that most of the top players are poor, suffering college students, who are only supplying the demands of older players who can't be bothered training. I'm sure they would laugh at your plea for pity, and tell you to try putting food on the table for an entire family before whining about the cost of books and tuition (which is paid for by those very same parents in many cases).
Your so-called mea culpa doesn't wash. While I agree that in the grand scheme of things it matters very little, the bottom line is that there is a standing rule, and you broke it. A gaming environment is a miniature universe; as owners of the RuneScape universe, Jagex are to be respected as its gods, and their rules as scripture. I also agree that there are better ways to address the issue, and that Jagex could learn a thing or two from other companies. But you and I don't get to make those decisions, they do. Whether or not we like a particular rule, and even if we can rationalize it into oblivion with a seemingly unassailable manifesto such as yours, the rule yet remains on the RuneScape website. And at the end of it all, THAT IS ALL THAT MATTERS.
If this sounds silly or naive to you, it can only be due to your own lack of maturity. Children naturally rebel against authority because they are testing its limits and their own ability to think for themselves. As we mature, we begin to realize that (in representative governments at least) there are legitimate reasons for most rules and that they evolve organically due to real concerns, rather than spouting arbitrarily from the diseased minds of oppressive rulers. Maturity comes when we accept the fact that certain behaviors are allowed, and certain others are not, whether in real life or in a game.
I do support your suggestion that players who wish to see the rule against RWIT lifted should petition Jagex directly, rather than taking it upon themselves to disregard the rule by openly and repeatedly breaking it, as you did.