rmt posts

The lesser of two evils is still evil

by Eliot Lefebvre Jan 28th 2010 at 8:00PM

Filed under: Culture, Exploits, MMO industry, Opinion

There are a lot of choices we face where we don't so much pick a good option as we pick the option that's least negative. Most people would argue that going to work is a better choice than faking illness and calling out, but not really a choice they like. Kill Ten Rats recently posed an interesting question along the same lines: would you rather your game have gold farmers or cheaters?

As the full piece argues, gold farmers are the greater evil to the companies running the game -- they aren't paying customers and they're disrupting the playerbase. But the average player is more likely to run into cheaters than gold farmers, and they're more likely to have a direct negative effect upon the experience of the game. Yet teams tend to be more active in pursuing gold farmers (witness Aion's theatrical destruction of them) because cheaters, to the company, are a slightly lesser problem.

Obviously, it's not a binary equation, and some games (such as Final Fantasy XI) place both at an equally high target priority. The fundamental question, however, is an excellent one -- cheating jerks, or RMT bots? There's no good option.

Tags: aion, aion-the-tower-of-eternity, bots, botting, cheaters, exploits, ffxi, final-fantasy-xi, gold-farmers, kill-ten-rats, rmt

NCsoft's Game Survelliance Unit speaks out on account security

by Rubi Bayer Jan 20th 2010 at 4:00PM

Filed under: MMO industry, News items

The extra attention to security measures at NCsoft continues, with the latest being a message on the Aion site from Scott Jennings (GM Luminary) of NCsoft's Game Surveillance Unit.

The point of the message is to make sure the players understand what a large, aggressive business the RMT market is. There is a huge amount of money on the line, and those involved are working very hard to make sure the profits keep rolling in. Jennings explained what NCsoft views as their job in this fight and what they've been doing on their end, even detailing a few specific examples of security testing.

The message continued with a much longer list: what players can do on their end to protect themselves. While much of it may seem obvious to veteran players, with account security attacks becoming ever more frequent and aggressive, it's a pretty good idea for everyone to read through what Jennings has to say, and be sure you're protecting yourself as much as you can.

Tags: Account-Security, aion, guild-wars, ncsoft, rmt, scott-jennings

Korea rules that virtual currencies can be exchanged for real money

by Eliot Lefebvre Jan 13th 2010 at 12:00PM

Filed under: Lineage 2, Making money, News items, Legal, Virtual worlds

The odd thing about us gamers is that we seem to think of the various doodads in our games as being real -- even more to the point, as being ours. We think and act as if we're owed some compensation if we're deprived of them. Which is silly, really -- after all, that Monster Signa isn't a real staff, that Deputy Chain Coat isn't a real coat, and all that gold isn't real money.

Except that now, in South Korea, it is. A ruling by the nation's supreme court has stated that virtual currency is the equivalent of real-world money. Even more sweeping are the details of the case that led to the ruling, in which two men were on trial for exchanging a large amount of Lineage II Adeena for cold, hard currency.

For those of you who might not be drawing the link, the core there is that selling in-game currency for real money is essentially just an exchange of currency and perfectly legal in South Korea. This could have sweeping implications for RMT operations the world over, not to mention free-to-play games and... well, online games in general. The official story is available online from both the Korea Times and JoongAng Daily.

Tags: korea, l2, lii, lineage-2, lineage-ii, money, money-exchange, real-money-trading, rmt, south-korea, virtual-money, virtual-worlds

Crystal Palace Space Station auction tops 330,000 US dollars

by Seraphina Brennan Dec 29th 2009 at 7:00PM

Filed under: Sci-fi, Entropia Universe, Culture, Events, in-game, News items, Virtual worlds

Remember a while back when we mentioned that the Crystal Palace Space Station went up for sale in Planet Calypso, marking the start of another insane bidfest to claim what could be a very real source of income? Well, the auction is over and the winner has been declared -- Buzz "Erik" Lightyear has taken control of Crystal Palace for the very, very hefty sum of 3,300,000 PED. For those of you who want to know the real world value, you're looking at a cool 330,000 dollars.

While this seems insane (and it probably is, to some degree), Mr. Lightyear will be looking at revenue coming in from the hunting conducted on the space station, plus the purchases made there. In short, this space station is a walking money generator, especially as it's the only place to find alien body parts used to make high-end armor. All Buzz has to do is let the station run, set a decent tax rate, keep it stocked with things to hunt, and he can take all the PED he earns and translate it into cold, hard cash.

For all of the bidding insanity, check out the full coverage of the auction over at Entropia Planets.

Tags: auction, breaking, crystal-palace-space-station, entropia-universe, mindark, planet-calypso, real-money-trade, rmt, space-station

NCsoft sings a familiar tune with Aion security warnings

by Rubi Bayer Dec 29th 2009 at 11:00AM

Filed under: Fantasy, Aion, Culture, News items

If you've been watching the increasingly insistent security warnings from NCsoft in the Aion community, your first reaction is probably to assume that it's another round of hackings a la Guild Wars. Don't be so quick to jump to that conclusion however, because while the warnings are pretty familiar this is a bit of a different situation.

With Aion's recent huge (and sometimes hilarious) push to ban gold sellers, the RMT traders are looking for new ways to make a (dis)honest living. And they're starting with some pretty official-looking phishing attempts in-game. Aion Support Tweeted a warning a while back, and Andrew "Tamat" Beegle echoed the sentiment last night, pointing back to the security warnings on the main site.

Unfortunately, gold sellers are persistent. And while it's a relief not to have them hanging around in game anymore, they didn't decide to step away from their computers and find a different way to make a living, they just changed tactics. So let's be careful out there.

Tags: aion, andrew-beegle, gold-sellers, gold-selling, hacking, ncsoft, rmt

Free Realms Introduces player-to-player real money transactions

by Rubi Bayer Dec 18th 2009 at 1:30PM

Filed under: Fantasy, Business models, News items, Free-to-play, Free Realms

Sony Online Entertainment is taking an interesting step to help cut down on fraud and gold farming: beating them at their own game. As of today, if you are a Free Realms player over the age of 18 you have the option to use Live Gamer Exchange (LGX), a RMT service set up to allow players to trade virtual goods in Free Realms for real world cash. "LGX for Free Realms allows SOE to make tremendous progress in reducing fraud by providing a secure platform for legitimate player-to-player transactions."

Live Gamer is an established provider of real money transaction platforms, and all LGX transactions in Free Realms will be authenticated through Live Gamer and done without extra fees. It's an unusual approach to the gold-seller problem, but may meld well with the new Free Realms pricing structures in the end as players find they can earn a few dollars in game to offset the cost of advancing in the game.

Tags: free-realms, gold-sellers, lgx, Live-Gamer, live-gamer-exchange, rmt, SOE, sony-online-entertainment

The most efficient way to make money in MMOs

by Eliot Lefebvre Dec 13th 2009 at 10:00AM

Filed under: Culture, Economy, Making money, Opinion

Cash flow in many games is almost as big a problem as it can be in real life. We've recently had our resident EVE Online column running a series on the best ways to make ISK in the game, and you can barely throw a stone without hitting a site offering a guide to make X ludicrous amount of gold per hour in World of Warcraft. But we may have reached the end of all this maneuvering, as We Fly Spitfires has recently posted the most efficient way to make money in every game, ever. Go ahead and take a look right now, but fair warning -- it requires some out-of-game work. And your credit card.

Now, before you start sending angry letters, take a moment to consider the point. It's not that the author is condoning RMT, simply that he's pointing out how much we seem to want to streamline the process of playing the game when, really, we already know the absolute fastest way to increase our virtual coffers. That doesn't make it commendable or ethical, but if we're so keen on speeding ourselves up, we might do well to remember that the journey, not the destination, is more frequently our reason for playing.

Tags: buying-gold, buying-money, efficiency, gold, in-game-economy, making-money, opinion, rmt, we-fly-spitfires

Why RMT won't go away

by Eliot Lefebvre Nov 20th 2009 at 10:00AM

Filed under: Business models, Culture, Economy, Exploits, Opinion

"Companies should just stop gold farmers." It's a consistent complaint in many games, with "gold" replaced by your game's currency of choice. As complaints go, it's right around "somebody should do something about all the problems" in terms of overall utility, but heck, no one likes the practice and it should just be eliminated, right? Well, as Scott Jennings has pointed out recently, it's not quite that easy.

As Lum points out, there are several common misconceptions about the entire process. Among them are the idea that the game company doesn't step in because they're getting kickbacks, which is pointed out to fail the simple test of Occam's razor. When developers want to get more money from an existing game, there are usually better ways to run it, such as the Champions Online model or the Dungeons and Dragons Online approach. He also tackles the infamous statement that the farmers are paying customers and therefore the company has even less incentive to stop them.

So if everyone hates RMT, why is it still around? The article briefly touches upon it, but We Fly Spitfires had a recent post that articulates more specifically: more people buy gold than would necessarily admit it. Since no one will admit to it, no one ever asks, and as a result there's a large culture of silence that publicly despises it and privately takes part. In short? As long as there's a customer base, the farming will continue. Food for thought all around.

Tags: business-models, champions-online, co, culture, ddo, dungeons-and-dragons-online, economy, exploits, gold-farming, lum-the-mad, microtransactions, rmt, scott-jennings, we-fly-spitfires

EVE's Quarterly Economic Newsletter focuses on impact of anti-RMT operation

by James Egan Nov 10th 2009 at 7:00PM

Filed under: Sci-fi, EVE Online, Economy, MMO industry

One of the strengths of the sandbox game EVE Online is its player-driven economy, which developer CCP Games monitors through a small team of researchers headed up by Lead Economist Dr. Eyjólfur Guðmundsson (aka CCP Dr.EyjoG). They observe all manner of player interactions and sift through a tremendous amount of data to track how EVE Online's economy changes over time. Their findings are presented to the playerbase (or to anyone curious about virtual economies) in the form of Quarterly Economic Newsletters (QEN). CCP released the 3rd Quarter 2009 report this week, which gives us a look at player demographics and the most popular ships flown by those players. (It's interesting to note that the most popular ship in the game is now the Hulk, a mining vessel which has usurped the Raven battleship as EVE's most flown ship, while Black Ops battleships are EVE's least flown ships.)

This latest QEN also gives various price indices and Market Snapshots, which chart the volumes of a number of popular items traded on the open market. CCP also shows the impact "Operation: Unholy Rage" -- their anti-RMT initiative -- has had on EVE Online's economy with over 18,000 (paying) accounts banned to date. Dr.EyjoG writes, "Unholy Rage taught us a great deal about RMT operations in EVE. We now have a much clearer picture of the extent of operations and the tools and methods they use."

Tags: ccp, ccp-games, dr-eyjog, economics, economy, eve, eve-online, eyjolfur-gudmundsson, interstellar-kredit, isk, market-trends, mmo-industry, new-eden, qen, quarterly-economic-newsletter, rmt, sci-fi, unholy-rage, virtual-economy

Are subscription game item shops the third Trammel?

by Brooke Pilley Nov 8th 2009 at 4:00PM

Filed under: MMO industry, Making money, Opinion

We like to keep our ear to the blogging (under)ground here at Massively because we often find interesting ideas and perspectives on the MMO industry. For instance, Green Armadillo of Player vs. Developer (PvD) just made a bold yet insightful statement about subscription game item shops being the third Trammel. For those unfamiliar, Trammel changed the way most people played Ultima Online and could be considered a paradigm shift in the industry from "harsh" PvP-enabled MMOs to safer PvE.

It's no secret that the rise of microtransactions and MMO item shops (aka real money trading or RMT) are a big change in direction from traditional subscription based MMOs. However, it now seems we're seeing the line blur between the two. Dungeons & Dragons Online, Champions Online, and most recently World of Warcraft are all subscription-based MMOs with built-in RMT. Are we witnessing the birth of the third Trammel?

As for the second Trammel, PvD calls out WoW's solo quest system. Never in any previous MMO did players enjoy such easy soloability and it seems that every triple-A MMO since WoW has relied heavily upon the solo quest system. We think PvD may be on to something here.

Tags: champions-online, dungeons-and-dragons-online, item-shop, microtransactions, real-money-trading, rmt, subscription, trammel, ultima-online, world-of-warcraft

CCP's Ryan Dancey on keeping EVE Online compelling

by James Egan Nov 6th 2009 at 8:00PM

Filed under: Sci-fi, EVE Online, Business models, Economy, Interviews, MMO industry

CCP Games Chief Marketing Officer Ryan S. Dancey recently spoke with Gamasutra's Christian Nutt about the state of EVE Online and what makes the sci-fi title unique. EVE has traits that many MMOs don't, such as player governance, a dynamic virtual economy, and slow but continual subscription growth. CCP does face problems in tandem with that growth however, namely from RMT operations. There is also the issue of balancing developer control over aspects of the game's economy (mission rewards, salvage and loot drops, ISK sinks) with the ideal of allowing EVE's economy to be as player-driven as possible, explains Dancey.

Among other things discussed in the interview, Gamasutra asks how White Wolf has changed following the merger with CCP Games nearly three years ago. Dancey tells Gamasutra: "It's just an imprint... White Wolf used to have a fairly large staff. It doesn't anymore. It's focusing primarily on the World of Darkness RPG products. It's not doing some of the things it used to do; board games and other card games and things. The focus of the company [CCP] is on making MMOs and our legacy table top business is a legacy business."

Tags: ccp, ccp-games, chief-marketing-officer, christian-nutt, economy, eve, eve-online, gamasutra, goals, interviews, mmo-industry, player-driven, plex, rmt, ryan-dancey, subscribers, unholy-rage, virtual-economy, white-wolf, world-of-darkness

Aion 24/7 GM support 'coming very soon'

by Kyle Horner Oct 14th 2009 at 1:00PM

Filed under: Fantasy, Aion, News items

Aion has a lot of great qualities, although one of the biggest issues in-game towers above pretty much any others: 24/7 in-game GM support. Whether it's gold spammers, bugs or some issue that goes above and beyond asking for help in guild chat -- constant GM support is essential for happy customers.

So you'll be happy to know it's coming very soon! At least, according to recent Twitter activities by the community team. As the weeks continue to churn for this newly hatched (at least in the west) MMO, having a quality support team is going to make or break many potential players' opinions when their hesitant friends ask, Aion"Should I pick up Aion?" Thus, this is good news. Not as good as it actually happening, but very close!

[via TTH]

Tags: aion, community, game-master, gm, gm-support, gold-sellers, gold-spammer, ncsoft, rmt, technical-support, twitter

Carrie Gouskos shares a couple WAR teasers

by Brooke Pilley Sep 29th 2009 at 3:00PM

Filed under: Fantasy, Interviews, Warhammer Online

MMO blogger Werit recently caught up with Mythic Entertainment's Carrie Gouskos and asked her a few questions. For those of you who don't know Carrie, she's an associate producer for Warhammer Online who has worked on such things as the Tome of Knowledge, user-interface, Realm War website, and Mac client.. The interview mostly covers things she's been working on, so be sure to check it out.

While discussing the Realm War site, Carrie offered this teaser: "Actually one of the unannounced Special Projects that we've been investigating since the beginning of the year is an example of an extension of the Realm WAR. I can't spoil it now, but I would keep an eye open in the next month or so for more info." We can't help but wonder if this has anything to do with EA's May 2008 acquisition of MMO social network, Rupture.

Carrie also briefly mentions something about a "cards" page in the Tome. Will WAR be getting a trading card game? Does this signal an imminent RMT or free-2-play model? That's just speculation at this point but we'll keep our ear to the ground for you.

Tags: carrie-gouskos, ea, f2p, interview, mythic-entertainment, real-money-trading, realm-war, rmt, rupture, tome-of-knowledge, war, warhammer-online, werit

Bright Shadow set to light up Western shores in 2009

by William Dobson Aug 24th 2009 at 6:00PM

Filed under: Betas, Fantasy, Guilds, New titles, News items, Free-to-play

The US arm of Japanese game publisher Gamepot (note: not Gamespot, nor indeed Gamestop) has announced that they will be bringing a new free-to-play title to North American gamers by the end of the year. Bright Shadow promises hordes of unique monsters -- frightening stuff like squirrels with scythes -- collectively known as "Umbra" to battle throughout the game's world, using one of 20 different character classes. One of its other main features is a strong focus on social functions, with a robust guild system including guild halls and rankings. The world will have an "ever-changing weather system" and will contain a plethora of instanced dungeons.

While the Umbra monsters will remain fairly untouched during the localization process, there will be new story lines and some beefed up character customization options awaiting players of the US version of Bright Shadow. Down the line, an RMT item mall will be introduced, allowing players to spend "Pot Cash" to get their hands on some aesthetic character enhancements. A teaser site has been launched and a closed beta application will be available through it some time soon, with the closed beta scheduled to begin this fall. Hit the jump to see a CGI trailer for the game.

Tags: beta, bright-shadow, closed-beta, free-to-play, gamepot, gamepot-usa, guilds, item-mall, pot-cash, rmt, umbra, weather-system

EVE Online's anti RMT operation Unholy Rage bans over 6200 accounts

by James Egan Aug 17th 2009 at 8:00PM

Filed under: Sci-fi, EVE Online, Economy, Exploits, MMO industry

Last week, Massively explained a bit about the war on real money trading (RMT) in EVE Online. The game's developer, CCP Games, has approached the problem from a few different angles. Central to their strategy of combating sellers of the game's currency called ISK (Interstellar Kredits) is to offer another way for players to exchange real world currency for the virtual in EVE Online -- "PLEX", or the 30 Day Pilot License Extension. PLEX is an in-game item that represents gameplay time and can be bought, sold, or traded on the open market in-game. PLEX has been integral in combating the numerous shady ISK selling websites in operation and CCP's dev blog last week showed how the playerbase is starting to embrace this system.

After all, if this practice of outright buying in-game assets with real world cash is going to happen in EVE, as with most MMOs (and regardless of what the developers try to do to curb this) it might as well be via a system the devs can regulate. It's a slippery slope, and CCP's approach to the problem does have some critics, but thus far it's been successful. PLEX has only been one facet of their battle against the ISK spammers, sellers, and the virtual armies of macro-using operations, though. CCP's operation "Unholy Rage" is a major offensive against the RMT operations exploiting the game, and is the subject of a dev blog from EVE Online's GM Grimmi.

Tags: ban, bans, ccp-games, dev-blog, dev-blogs, economy, eve, eve-online, exploits, isk, macro, macros, mmo-industry, plex, real-money-trading, real-money-transactions, rmt, sci-fi, unholy-rage