Duke_Freedom

Well no. It did say that people were generally a bit higher leveled and slightly more wealthy on the RMT allowed servers. If I were to speculate on that, I'd say that it are generally the more the avid players who are interested in the allowance of RMTing. Sorry I don't want to sound mean, but I want to give you the captain obvious award of the day. :D The problem is that people don't agree on whether it is bad or not though. ;) If it's so simple then I don't get why people are still discussing it and why this thread has so many lengthy posts. :P The game company selling gold --> increase of the total amount of gold ingame --> leads to instability of all prices of items in the game. The game company selling specific items --> increase of the item they sell --> practically leads to instability of the price of the item they sell only.

I guess I get what you're saying, but I wouldn't say animals don't have the same kind of 'morality' at all. There are plenty of stories where, for example, a mother dog raises young kitties or whatever who lost their natural mother. Apparently the dog perceives it as her "duty" to raise the kitties in that case, which is some sort of 'human morality' too - helping those who are in need of help as they are unable to help themselves.

Oh well I guess the kids deciding the policies at Jagex finally reached the level of "common sense" by figuring out that is actually better to make Luring against the rules anyway. Let's see if they can advance further to the level of "Preventing is better than curing"... In that case Luring would have never become such an issue as it is now. :roll:

Why do you say that? They actually kill for a purpose - hunger - and generally don't kill if it doesn't serve a purpose. Perhaps some animals know better what is moral and what is not than some humans.

I'm fairly sure that anything ever developped by humans was under the excuse that it was for the purpose of saving lives. Sorry, not the best arguement you could come up with. It's called knowing that they will continiously adjust the line of what is allowed and what is not further and further until it's out of sight. It's not called stupidity, it's called reality. However, what is stupid, is having a unconditional support for whatever scientific subject. Scientists may have critic on the unconditional support some people put into a god they can't see, hear and feel, but the unconditional support some scientists put into the further development of their science is not much different if you ask me. I am not against genetic manipulation, in fact, I've always had a pro/neutral standing towards it, but I'm starting to become rather sceptic - and you should be too. Especially you actually, because if there is one thing that you should be learning during an academic study it'd be the fact that you should remain sceptic about anything at all times. Again, it's not fear, it's called common sense. By the time we get close to the hypothetical situations, they will become unevitable and so it will be of no use discussing the "hypothetical" situations anymore then.

You all better watch out - the sheep will revolt and take over the world soon. On a more serious note, I think I'm starting to become more and more against all this genetic manipulation and stuff. I just think that humanity is not knowing what road they are taking and where it will eventually lead us and I believe it may have considerable negative consequences on the long-term. That said, I'm completely convinced that they'll only go further and further with things like this anyway. In the sense that it's both for the reason of survival, no it's not different. But do keep in mind that this is about growing sheep with human organics in them to provide to people who need those organics. If you think about it any longer than 3 seconds you'll conclude that it's just plain weird. Sorry, but the easiness with which you compare it to "slaughtering them for meat" already worries me.

I started disagreeing with the article when it started mentioning party hats more or less as the cause of much of the item scamming and mentioned that because people seek after these items some kids see the need to merchant which he brought like "oh my gosh isn't the worst thing the world?" - while the idea and concept of merchanting is one of the few things kids may actually learn from this game. :roll: For the rest - the world is not all fluffy, good and colourful, perhaps it's not that bad that kids learn about that in an early state in their life as that will lead to a smaller disappointement when they actually figure out that the world is not all fluffy, good and colourful later in their lifes. On the other hand, it is worrying that kids are being confronted by this on such a early age, as, like the article pointed out too, this leads to copy-cat behaviour with those kids acting just as bad as the rest of the world because they don't know better.

I still think your way overestimating the effects allowance of RMT would have, but I guess we can merely agree to disagree on that. :P I also still question how many people who say that will actually make it true. I see people continously claiming that they won't play a certain game for various reasons, but people eventually adapt to it and play anyway. Especially when it would be a game they'd really like and when the negative effects prove to nowhere near as big as the anti-RMTers always claim. Still, I'm personally not against the idea of RMT-allowed and RMT-disallowed servers and perhaps a game that starts out that way may interest both kind of players even more, although I do somewhat doubt whether the RMT-disallowed servers would really have no RMTing going on.

I would say it has no impact on that whatsoever, with the arguement that people who bot already break a rule anyway and won't be caring to break another rule specific for RMTing. Don't know, there seem to be quite a few people claiming to be banned wrongly, but ofcourse you can never verify whether what they say is true or not. Judging from the amount of people claiming this these days to say a few months or a year ago, I do think Jagex loosened its own demands on the required "evidence" for RMTing, which may have led to the increase in wrong bannings. However, that is pure speculation. That is indeed the argument and it is not a lie that legit sellers (a.k.a. those who got their cash ingame without any breaking rules) are generally college / university students whereas buyers are typically working men in the high twenties / low thirties. If we're actually talking about the Chinese farming shops where they don't run bots but "play" the game - which does exist - then that's the only tough issue I personally have with the allowance of RMTing. Technically they'd become completely legal in that case. Now it's rather complex what the effects of that'd be (if anything at all: compared to the current situation) though. That's what I found strange about the Everquest II RMT-allowed servers though: there were no Chinese farming companies who made use of the RMT-allowed trading system. I'm strongly against game designers selling gold themselves for inflationary issues - if game designers want to participate in their own allowance of RMTing I'd personnally suggest them to design specific items that they only sell for real money (but which are normally tradable for ingame gold once bought). Furthermore, considering the low wages in China, I don't think that it is feasible for the game company to "compete" with such gold farms.

Does make some sense with the rising yew log prices, but I find it hard to say anything definite on it. Not enough in touch with the game anymore to know how bad the botting is these days and it's hard to compare anyway. Project Entropia, renamed to Entropia Universe a few months ago though. But yeah that game is pretty much 'rigged' against the players - except for some individual players who dare to spend huge amounts of real cahs in it and merchants I guess. Second Life is not much of a 'game' but it is indeed the best example of a fully integrated and thriving RMT economy. Ordinary game companies are better compared with Everquest II though. Votes meili for Jagex CEO. :P

Yes yes, surely higher and probably a few times higher than what Jagex makes these days. Oh yeah, WoW would surely be at top anyway - it's one of the most expensive MMOG games around and still has one of the largest player populations anyway. *Duke gets headache of the thought of a MMOG that is good for women to play :P Nevertheless it may be rather popular and get much more women involved in this whole MMOG thingy, although women participation overall has already been growing anyway as far as I know. Less so in RuneScape I think though.

They don't need to wish, they made over 310 million $$$ and are likely to generate more in the future. 310million / year / 50 million players = $6 / player / year. Doesn't sound like they have 50 million paying players eh? So yes they can wish whatever they want - but they don't got 50 million subscribing players. :roll: In fact, they don't got any subscribing players at all, considering they make their revenue due to selling ingame items, as far as I know. And yes, working with total revenue earned would work a lot better, except that many companies don't publish those numbers. And I guess RuneScape, costing only $5 / month, may turn out being listed lower then too.

No way, that article must be erroneous. Just *one* game (Maplestory) has over 50 million players. 50 million! The 10 million figure has been passed since july 2005 already and the latest figures I know estimate it at 13 million (but that estimate is about a year old too). Reading it in the article they may mean that they expect an increase of 10 million players between now and 2011, which would be highly possible. Anyway it does say subscriptions: that is, not counting free to play accounts. Maplestory hasn't got 50 million paying players - they'd wish.

The logic of people here at tip.it is just so great. The whole idea of a glitch is that it's not your fault, but hey, we'll just say it's your fault anyway. :lol: Anyway, I have always had mixed feelings with this. It is my opinion that if the game company is really at fault and if the game company is undeniably and directly the cause of the loss of a person's items then the game company is obligated to give the items back to said person. In all other cases I'd say it could be misused too easily, which is something you don't want to happen either. Jagex' policy is however the easiest and it seems that Jagex always takes the easiest road whereever they can.

While I see the realism you are trying to reach (and I actually expect that future games may have such powerful yet unaffordable spells implemented), I don't think it can work well in RuneScape. The PKing / Staking systems aren't made for something like that and that's the only place where people would want to use such an instant-kill spell.

Yeah that was the all time low of party hats (not counting when they were dropped and the dupe) during the start of rs2 when they were experiencing a large price drop.. Prices of party hats were about: Purple: 2mil Yellow: 2.6mil Red: 2.4mil Green: 3.2mil White: 3mil Blue: 4.5mil That phat set would be worth ~1.2-1.3bil now. :lol:

What do you think of 18mil for a phat set. :P Dates back to 11-june-2004.

Not attacking Iran might be as big as a mistake as allowing Hitler to ever gain power in Germany in the first place. Either way, these 15 soldiers are probably not going to be the cause of a war anyway. Nor do I believe in an all out war either - possibly a swift attack and perhaps not even executed by America.

Yes? :lol:

Heh so true. :P Starcraft still has my vote for best RTS ever though.

It doesn't make too much sense that that would have a negative effect on the prices of rares though. Most of the merchants / stakers who were banned kept small gp stashes while having most of their money invested in rares. Relatively little gp was lost versus many rares, which would be a reason for rares to rise rather than drop. That said, trade in rares has significantly slowed down throughout the past years and this might have a small negative effect on the price. Still, I'd say the increase in rarity would be far more important than this. I think I do agree with Nadril that gold farming companies are probably selling more than the various individual rich merchants/stakers combined, although it's hard to say anything definite on it. Nevertheless, as I already pointed out, these gold farming companies do indeed have a significant influence on the game's economy (although that is because they break other rules as well!): the massive macroing does lead to lower material prices and more gp productions, which in turn (should) also lead to higher rares prices. Chinese farmers have a similar effect however. Merchants/stakers on the other hand do not effectively create anything - in essence they only make money change hands. This has little to no effect on the games economy and therefore it does not matter much when they proceed to sell the money they earn either.

They omitted the games Lineage and Lineage II, which I believe would otherwise be between WoW and RuneScape. Nevertheless, RuneScape has a large market share these days.

I'd call prayer definately buyable - there are enough people who train it the expensive way and it spares a considerable amount of time for those who spend bulks of cash on it, which is a more or less formal definition of 'buyable skills' in my opinion. I'd also say that cooking and fletching are only quasi-buyable or even not buyable skills at all, as you can get most of your money back, break-even or may even make a small profit depending on the exact prices of the materials at times. I believe this also goes for crafting. Ranging and runecrafting going under the section quasi-buyable seems fine, but if I'd have to choose I'd probably throw them under the section non-buyable. You forgot herblore by the way, which goes under the section buyable to as far as I'm aware. For the rest I agree with your list.

But the article says the amount of RMTing in allowed and disallowed servers was estimated to be the same - then that can't possibly be caused by the RMTing? Ah, I was thinking of rare items dropped from NPC's that would never be tradable at all as such items exist in some MMOG's too. The binding you're talking about isn't bad.

I have to admit that I know little about EverQuest II, so discredit me for that if you want to, but I find your claim strange considering these parts of the research article: According to the research project the amount of RMTing in the RMT-allowed servers versus the RMT-disallowed servers was not much different at all. So I maintain my stance that the claim that the differences - that you say exist - are not caused by RMT at all. In fact, the positive nature of the article is suprising. So far, normal MMOG companies were continously trying to convince everyone that RMTing is 'evil' and that it has extremely negative effects for the economy of these games - Sony is clearly taking a different stance on that now. Why should everything be 'fair' though? The whole idea of MMOG is that they are not the same static short-game like an online game of Warcraft III, Counter-Strike and whatever else, where it is a real requirement that everything is 'fair'. To be honest, I have disliked the "but it's unfair" arguements ever since I started playing RuneScape, observing it being overused for about anything in RuneScape. I tell you that if all the people who say that something is unfair got their way, noone would like RuneScape anymore. The heart of MMOG's is already unfair. Someone who started now has to spend less time to gain 99 in all skills then someone who started years ago. On the other hand, the people who started years ago already have those 99's and have an easier time keeping up with getting 99's in newer skills, whereas newer players will have to try and catch up, which is much harder. No matter what you may say, in essence this is unfair as well, but there is obviously no solution for it. And this is breaking down on the second M in MMOG - Multiplayer. I have always been against untradability of items as it partly destroys a fundamental concept of these games. While such people do exist, they are an extreme minority. I would personally be fine with the solution that every game would have RMT-allowed and RMT-disallowed servers. However, as the research project suggest this would not stop RMTing taking place on disallowed servers.