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Comment RSSVirtual Gold can be Real Money
February 21, 2009 # 2:09 pm # Thoughts # 2 CommentsSo many MMOG players get bent out of shape when people buy in-game money with real money. Many feel that since the players didn’t earn their in-game gold in the game, that it’s unfair. Most MMOG’s make the buying of in-game money against their EULA. So if I spend some of my real hard earned cash to buy in-game gold in World of Warcraft, Blizzard has the right to ban my account. I say it’s because it’s against their EULA that it makes it unfair. Blizzard should get smart and start selling in-game gold themselves. They can manage the value better AND they can also allow players to convert their in-gold back into cold hard real life cash.
Ever hear of Entropia Universe? Formerly Project Entropia? This is precisely what they’ve been doing since I think 1999 (I gave it a try back then.. it was real raw, but saw the potential). There are people that make their RL cash by playing this game. Can Blizzard do this with WoW? Yes they can, I think they should! That way the people that work hard for their in-game gold can get RL rewards, and those people that work real hard (or just have a lot of cash) in RL can get in-game rewards. In the blurry lines between real & virtual worlds, for those people who have worked hard in their RL jobs, should that work not be able to be xferred to their virtual worlds?
What do you think?
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I do not disagree with the concept of buying gold, but I fear if you allow the big game makers to sell it, they’ll make it even harder to make it via farming.
It already annoyed me that (I played UO and FFXI) farming took up so much time, and then it was explained that it’s to slow the game down to keep the monthly fees pouring in.
If you could even sell your ‘gold/gil’ back for cash, you know they’ll never take a loss so they’ll just wreck the in game economies.
I guess the banning occurs because of all the scamming and they don’t want the legal issues with lawsuits over the scams? IF there was a way to have a 3rd party do it, so Blizzard/Sony/whoever doesn’t have to worry, I’d have no problem with something that equalizes the game for people who don’t use scripts or play 12hrs a day
I’m all for Real world money hitting the Virtual life because it works for a lot of reasons. It allows people who are willing to put in the hours to make some cash off their efforts as well as making some money for the gaming company in question (that is if they are putting in the controls to let them make money off it as well)
Here’s the stick though – it takes away the one thing I love about the virtual world. Fairness. There’s a certain kind of fairness that’s in game that let’s me know as a player that as long as I play like anyone else and put in my time I am going to get the things I want with hard work and not because I have more money or less. But just like the real world now, you will be giving the advantage to those who have the money and where there’s money to be made in the real world there will be unfairness. I’m not talking about the healthy competition that you naturally get in a “normal” capitalistic society where trade and commerce have equilibrium. It’s been a long time since we can honestly say we have lived in a “healthy” competitive marketplace.
Nope. I’m talking about genuine unfairness because you know there are people out there that will try to make the most money they can from the situation and this is what will happen – Gold farming will become all about who can do it cheapest and you can bet that won’t be some independent gamer working hard for the designated 2.2 children at home while trying to hold a regular job. Nope. We’re talking about hundreds of thousands of people (overseas) all getting paid 5% of what a normal person in the world makes at a low-end job to pop out 10K in gold for you fer $29.95! (act now! Some restrictions apply, see Orc for details)
And that’s just the “farm gold” side. The “buy gold” side will equally uneven in the sense that it will change the game for those who can’t afford to buy all the gold the “jones’” are buying up thus putting them behind the curve and eventually not liking/playing the game. Entropia had the right idea putting it the game from concept, but to introduce something like that into an established game would seriously skew the rest of the play.
Want to do that in a game like WoW? – Have different servers for those wanting to play that way, with no option for characters on that server to transfer to a non-buy-gold server and see what happens. I think if you keep the questing system the way it is that you will find there are a bunch of God-like toons walking around the server in the end, bored out of their minds.