New Attitude - Gnomercee, no prisoners

This time a discussion on Real Money Trading (RMT) for virtual goods, what John Smedley said about it, and just who is Live Gamer, inc.?

Gnomercee, No prisoners -
John Smedley down on the farm(ers)

Price of a new five room suite in Gorowyn? Five million Gold. A new frog pond for your froglok? Priceless. (pictured at right - the frog pond in my five room suite in Gorowyn)

O.K., a bit of an exaggeration…

Fortunately runaway inflation of virtual currency, or mudflation, hasn’t hit EQ2 servers like it has some other MMOs – say Ultima Online (UO).  When the gold farmers got hold of the virtual economy of UO, it wasn’t long before mudflation hit the servers like a Mac Truck with a load of cement.  The result was the virtual equivalent of the $600 toilet seat and the $500 hammer.  What does John Smedley have to say about Real Money Trading for virtual goods (RMT)?

“We aren’t going to be allowing RMT in any way, shape or form on the non-exchange enabled EQ II servers. Period. End of statement. If we catch people, we ban them and have been for a long time now.” – John Smedley on EQ2 Flames

There is also a darker side of RMT beyond inflation of virtual curreny - where  banning from a given game is the least of your worries. If you buy gold you are fortunate if you have found someone reputable to deal with.  More often then not the words of Mr. Smedley from the same post on EQ2 Flames rings true…

“Many of them use stolen credit cards, obtained by unsuspecting users who give them credit card #’s to purchase in-game gold. I’m not saying all of the RMT shops out there use stolen credit cards, but a LOT of them do. Your credit card is absolutely not safe in their hands. In addition we recieve large scale (over $500k so far) fines for chargebacks that these scumbag farmers routinely do. They purchase a new account, use it for a month and then call the credit card company to say ‘I never paid for this’.” – John Smedley

Yet all you have to do is take a quick look back at the news in the MMO industry for the last three weeks and it will SEEM as if SoE has contracted with a company called Live Gamer, Inc. to provide real money trading for virtual goods. Isn’t this RMT you might ask? The answer, at least on the face of it, is no.  There is a great deal of misconception and misunderstanding over the difference between RMT and micro-transactions. Micro-transactions, paying real money for virtual goods, is what supports many of the games that come out of places other than Europe and the U.S. instead of monthly subscriptions.   These are the games that are free to play, unless you want some of the goods offered by the company who makes the game. Do micro-transactions cause mudflation? It depends on how they are carried out.

Will the SoE and their use of Live Gamer, inc. cause mudflation on the EQ2 servers?

Not if they are carried out the way John Smedley indicated in the quote above…

“In any event, I wanted to stop in and at least set the record straight - you aren’t going to be seeing RMT allowed on the non-exchange enabled servers.” - John Smedley on EQ2 Flames
This isn’t anything new.  SoE already has “Station Exchange enabled servers”. What are they?

Here is a quote from stationexchange.station.sony.com:

“Station Exchange is the official Sony Online Entertainment auction service that provides players a secure method of buying and selling the right to use in game coin, items and characters in accordance with SOE’s license agreement, rules and guidelines.” – SoE

SoE isn’t contracting with Live Gamer, inc. to manage the live servers – they have already said so.  But one cannot ignore the fact that in such transactions there is big money – VERY big money. In Korea RMT is a $1 Billion a year industry (source: Arstechnica.com) that South Korean Ministry of Culture and Tourism has been trying to control by passing legislation to control the sale of virtual currency. The mistaken impression is sometimes that the “gold farmer” is the person at fault.  The type of gold farmer that works in a shop somewhere in what is often Asian countries, for long hour and little pay, is just doing a job.  But what of the gold sellers? That, my friend, is a whole different matter, as you saw in my last column.

It looks like the way Live Gamer, inc. is going to be working won’t exactly be micro-transactions. They also won’t be RMT. So in the end if you want to be one of the people who “has their cake and eat it too” transfer your character to an exchange enabled server and pay hard earned U.S. dollars.  The transfer is permanent however – no going back.  Before you do, however, keep in mind the image of all the people bought everything that UO had to offer.  What did they do? They just sat around in front of the bank, bored out of their skulls, hoping that someone, somewhere would be impressed.

See you online,

Julie Whitefeather