Buying/Selling Lotro in-game items for real money

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Buying/Selling Lotro in-game items for real money

PostPosted: Wed Jun 27, 2007 4:58 pm

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Lazlo Hollyfeld
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What do you think of this? Apparently Turbine is considering options for selling in-game items and advancement for real money.

http://www.joystiq.com/2007/05/30/lotro ... he-future/

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PostPosted: Wed Jun 27, 2007 6:37 pm

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I think it was Sony that was considering this as well at one time.

The big problem I see with RMT is the imbalancing and imfalting effects it has on the in game market on any one server. The creation of "mean" people, the extensive use of bots for farming or claiming special mobs, etc.

Honestly, I could care less if someone had bought a cool sword. So long as it doesn't actually affect how I play, or how much I pay for basic items, go nutz.

The only way to ensure that is to have the dev manage it.
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PostPosted: Wed Jun 27, 2007 8:48 pm

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Syro
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Gold farmers do not "truly" impact game economies. Game developers do! In any 24 hour period, only so much gold will spawn under normal circumstances because of the pre-determined spawn rates of items, monsters, chests, drops, etc. When developers sell items, gold or gold-equivalent "tokens," they (the developers) create an unnatural inflation (devaluing of in-game gold) that gold farmers will never be able to achieve.

LOTRO is in business to maximize its profit. They would be foolish not to consider a marketing strategy that involves the selling of in-game items for real world dollars. There will always be a market for this kind of venture, and someone will be profiting from it. Is it in LOTRO's best interest to compete directly with the black market? I do not know.

If someone wants to spend real-world money to buy normal in-game items in LOTRO, I have no issue with it. I will not support it, but it will not impact my fun either.

In pvp/pk intense games like Lineage 2 that require a hardcore grind to advance characters, item buying with real world dollars can create a huge imbalance. If LOTRO was anything like L2, then I might have an issue.

PostPosted: Wed Jun 27, 2007 10:25 pm

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Anubis
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AO has announced they are doing this too. If I am honest, I can't see it being a good thing. RMT unbalances the game, plain and simple. Takes the whole point of working for gear etc to use on endgame content away, and causes prices on items using ingame currency to crash.

I may be wrong, and this may turn out to be a good move for LOTRO, but with my views on RMT being what it is I doubt it.
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PostPosted: Wed Jun 27, 2007 11:43 pm

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Note that this is not something they plan on doing for LOTRO, its something the producer sees as "inevitable in teh future."

Different thing altogether ;)

And RMT can affect econmy balance, in FFXI, it casue things that only players could create that were REQUIRED for a job to function properly to be obscenely expensive. It created a frequently hostile play environment, and left un checked, created huge price spikes and infaltion.

When they finally started banning people for it, prices plumetted and became "reasonable" again.

Giving people a regulated outlet is a good thing. Unregulated stupidity of RMT companies gets nutty and out of control and ultimately costs everyone more time/money...
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PostPosted: Thu Jun 28, 2007 4:11 pm

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Syro
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There is a definite "trend" for start-up and end-of-life MMO's to sell in-game items for cash, but it may not be the "most profitable" product delivery system for a large subscription-based MMO with a high quality product like LOTRO. Turbine will do what it thinks is best for its company, and I will vote with my USD on its decisions.

PostPosted: Mon Jul 02, 2007 2:31 pm

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Bladesinger
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RMT has ruined WoW. Not only are the advertising spam-bots an awful nuisance, the prices for goods have skyrocketed.

Now that Bliz made certain world drops required, often in large amounts, for professions/crafting the farmers are out 24/7 gathering these items, often to the point where a legit player can't gather on his/her own because the area is flooded with farmers. This has forced the prices of these items to heights where it's nigh impossible to complete crafting without either gathering at very odd times or farming enough gold to pay the insane amounts charged on the AH.

This doesn't even account for the affect of inflation on normal items either. RMT does happen and will always happen. While money making is the ultimate goal of these games, the consideration is how much can reasonably be made by managing RMT or losing subscription fees because of the detrimental effect it will have.

Here we go, how about making an RMT server, just for farmers to go to! Charge a higher subscription fee but allow the farmers a totally free hand in what they do and what resources leave the server. As long as I don't have insane competition for resources in-game on my server, I'm happy. :)
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PostPosted: Mon Jul 02, 2007 2:45 pm

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RMT enabled servers were actuall a suggestion for the SOE stuff, not sure if thats how they plan to go with it though.
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PostPosted: Mon Jul 02, 2007 3:28 pm

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Syro
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Bladesinger wrote:Here we go, how about making an RMT server, just for farmers to go to! Charge a higher subscription fee but allow the farmers a totally free hand in what they do and what resources leave the server. As long as I don't have insane competition for resources in-game on my server, I'm happy. :)
I like it.

PostPosted: Thu Jul 05, 2007 11:50 am

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Bladesinger
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Thanks! The trick is finding a way to get gold transferred from one server to another. Oh, wait, they can't get anything off that server? Sucks to be them. hahah :thumb:
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