We are so on the same page. Allowing players to purchase in game items will lead to classism. And yet, think of EA. Do you think they worry about social issues like that or that they worry about anything but the bottom line? I don’t.

It’s going to happen. It’s going to start small and then grow. With all of the money out there in the illegal gold buying market, we’re one big time MMO creator introducing it to it becoming a normal thing in MMOs.

An old adage says, follow the money. The money here is sitting in the coffers of IGE and their ilk. You somewhere, some CEO is going, “That could be our money!”.

Sad, but true, I believe.

What are your opinions on the after effects of developers adding RMT as an integral part of the game design? To explain:

1).What about classism where income versus time played is concerned? If a player is on a shoestring budget already and cant afford to spend cold hard cash on in game items, and is forced to play the “grind” in order to get a certain item/foozle or whatnot, dont you see that as slap in the face to those gamers who prefer to keep the sanctity of the “magic circle” intact?

I think that allowing players to use cash in order to get items in a vrtual world, where there is nothing to be gained other than having a “shiny” to show off, is insidiously stupid. There is nothing even remotely associated with “gaming” when you remove the competitive aspect of using the games own mechanic of obtaining items and it completely breaks the magic circle that “games” are designed to provide.

As for the last part, yeah, that’s a big step. But I really think it’s coming. The money requires MMOs to get involved, the involvement in making their currency/items have real world value will require extremely interesting terms of service and lawyers. And when they get sued over their sure to be ridiculous TOS, that will be what defines the law on virtual property.

I think we’ll see it easily within the next 10 years, virtual property having a legal value in our system. Probably less.

I’d like to take a step to the side and look at the math of this.

WOW has, lets say, 8 million subscribers. At $15/month, they are pulling in $120 million/month from the monthly fee. I don’t believe making every item for sale will fly too well, so let’s say that only 25% stick around for (WOW2: $$$ edition). To recoup that $120 million/month, each person would need to spend an extra $45/month on top of the monthly fee. That’s $60/month for a single game ($720/year). That’s a pretty steep payment. Even with a 50% attach rate, each player would need to spend $30/month (combined) on the game. That’s more manageable, but who is to say that Blizzard would price things cheap enough that only $15/month on purchases was even possible? I’ve never seen any addon-type transactions costing much less than $1, so who is to say that this trend will stop? Why would they want it to? It seems like gouging will be the story here.

And back to my original train of thought:

You seem to be talking out both sides of your mouth here, too. On the one hand you envision it to encompass every item in the game. On the other you’re giving an example of a single item being available for purchase and that it’d be popular. You may very well be right that some (many, who knows) people would jump to buy something they thought was out of reach. But what about “level 7 mundane sword”? How about the level 30 tunic that does nothing special?

The case that works for you is the bling bling, the rare and difficult to obtain items. When those items are not bling bling, are people going to be beating down the door to pay extra cash for them?

Also, I’ve been looking at it pragmatically from a possibility point of view. What happens when you look at it from a legal standpoint? By selling currency and specific items (instead of a service), it’s going to open up ownership issues that these companies may be loathe to deal with. What do you think?