Today felt kinda tense, because I spent the day arguing about Real Money Trade and in-game economics. Bleargh.
Plus, I have a horrendous cold.
So out came this. Which maybe I can record when I actually have a voice again.
I made Tobold mad… not something nice to do right before Christmas, I suppose.
It started when he made this proposal for the eradication of RMT (bolding is mine, to emphasize the key point):
I think that RMT is possible to eradicate. You just need to make gold “bind on pickup”. That is, you need to remove all possibility of asymmetric trades where one player can give or send gold to another player. And you need to change the auction house system to make it anonymous and blind, so that players can’t buy a worthless rock for 1000 gold and transfer money that way. This is totally possible, but it would have a cost: it would also remove twinking (unless you program a shared bank) and sending money to friends or guild mates. But possible it is, the only thing that is missing is the will of the game companies.
Now, I was really prompted to comment by an anonymous poster in the resulting thread (on whom I unleashed some sarcasm), but my response specifically to this design was to say
Technically, you would have to make every item in the entire world bind on pickup. Eradicate all forms of trade. Remove healing. Remove grouping. Remove all forms of assistance between one player and another.
Tobold disagrees, and perhaps feels that the sarcasm was directed at him (it wasn’t, and if he thinks so, I apologize).
In a typical example of how little developers are open to new ideas, Raph tries to discredit me by saying that my proposal to remove asymetric trade is equivalent to removing groups and guilds and all forms of cooperation from MMORPGs. Apparently he didn’t understand or chose to ignore the important word “asymetric”. A group in which one person tanks, another person heals, and other people deal damage is *not* asymetric as long as the characters involved are of roughtly the same level.
OK, to tackle key points one at a time…
Over at Tobold’s, I seem to have set off a discussion for the second time in a week. It starts because Tobold asserts,
I think that RMT is possible to eradicate. You just need to make gold “bind on pickup”. That is, you need to remove all possibility of asymmetric trades where one player can give or send gold to another player. And you need to change the auction house system to make it anonymous and blind, so that players can’t buy a worthless rock for 1000 gold and transfer money that way.
Technically, you would have to make every item in the entire world bind on pickup. Eradicate all forms of trade. Remove healing. Remove grouping. Remove all forms of assistance between one player and another.
I find this list fascinating, not just because of the rankings, but also because of the explanations people give. Go participate — but please be sure to follow the rules carefully. 🙂
f13.net forums – Your Top 10 MMOs
There’s a MUD one too…
I meant to post it a while ago, but forgot, but Sanya Thomas reminded me. 🙂
