What is your stance on the sale of game items for real money?

What is your stance on the sale of game items for real money?

  • It is wonderful!

    Votes: 1 3.8%
  • I do it, but only to keep up

    Votes: 1 3.8%
  • Indifferent

    Votes: 5 19.2%
  • Not for me, but not a problem

    Votes: 4 15.4%
  • It ruins games!

    Votes: 15 57.7%

  • Total voters
    26
Quite the poll maker today hey navarre? Well I honestly think that buying ingame items for real money is just simply wrong. You play a game for the social part of interacting with other players. You do not need to be the best and therefore I dont see no point in buying items. Besides your most likely gonna find the item that you just bought the next day when your not trying to get it lol
 
When you pay a subscription for a game, you are buying the game experience. When you pay real money for individual items in the game, you are paying for attachment to those items. Since they are what you forked out cash for, they will take the emphasis. You cannot take them home with you, you cannot be sure they will be in your character's inventory forever or relevant forever. In short, you are paying for transitory capitalistic indulgence that really shouldn't have anything to do with the game as a whole-- and furthermore it unbalances the game for those who have different priorities.

While I understand why companies do it, I personally don't participate in games that do.
 
Personally, I'd have no problem with it - IF there was some way to prove that the people doing the buying and selling are doing so at no detriment to their personal budgets (i.e. all bills are paid, food on table, thermostat at comfortable temperature, etc.). Let's admit it - the people who become obsessed with MMOs enough to want to buy stuff to get ahead generally (there are exceptions, don't persecute me too badly) don't do the above, they sacrifice something in order to get ahead in their game.

Since there is no way to prove that it's not detrimental to their personal life, I'd say absolutely not.
 
I am pretty indifferent. What I really don't like is all of the restrictions mmorpgs put in place to combat this. Especially BOE (bind on equip) and Level Restrictions for items.

I think you should be able to use a T'Kashi Mirror Blade or (insert uber purpley item here) at level 1, even it was passed down in Twink-like fashion, but with reduced effectiveness that reflects your SKILL level, not actual level. Skill based advancement ftw.
 
Everquest 2 had a good system for toning down equipment while someone is mentoring, however, there were still level requirements. I think for a system like this to work, the items have to be somewhat concrete and need less restrictions on them. Oh and we must not already be paying a monthly fee on top of needing that uber gold dragon sword to smite more enemies. I mean, one way or the other. Subscription fee or pay per item. And it should be cheap if we are buying from the company, whereas we can still auction things off to other players.. like with Sony Exchange. I personally do not possess the funds to buy this kind of stuff but would gladly play an MMO and acquire items to sell and make a little bit of spending money a week.
 
If a company isn't charging a fee and they offered up cool items for about a standard fee. I can support that. Currently I'm playing Scions of Fate and Roma Victor which neither have a monthly fee, but I have paid around 10 bucks in each to support the game and get something cool in return.
Now if I was paying the standard fee and the only way to gain balance swerving in game devices was to pay more? I'd most likely move along. Which I've done because there's games out there that do that.

Over all tho'. I'm indifferent. It's something I don't partake in often and it's something I can simply move away from.
 
As long they do itembased games we will see alot more of this. When Items becomes the way of develop you character and people dont wanna play the games to get it, it will not stop.

Bind on pickup or other soulbound solutions is halfhearted way to battle it, when break the silly "forced item upgrade"-systems will end it. Leveled up characters might still be at sale however...

But then again, as long most of the western countries thinks the forces of marked is a law of nature, there will always be some way to make an extra buck if theres a demand. And as long theres people wanna play games they dont wanna ..eum.. "play", there will be a demand.

Ok, As I cant really understand why people wanna pay IRL money for in game stuff, im sort of against it. I just hope developers focus on making good games instead of making this a part of gamemechanics (ie SoE), only to make that extra buck.


...edit:
If there was an option to vote: "I want developers to make the games interesting enough to be played" I would have picked that.
I dont think it allways ruin games, but it was the closest thing for me to pick...
 
Like some of you have stated if its the primary source of income for a game then thats fine since you know it before walking into the game. But other games where you pay your $15 a month ummm no it ruins the game and the ingame economy.

Items that should cost 1g now cost 100g which is just rediculas. But people do it and always will when its available so whateva.
 
I wouldn't do it. That small bit of legal ease in the TOS always says something to the effect that "...gameplay may change...".

Such purchased items could be nerfed, altered, or completely gotten rid of at the discretion of someone(s) else.
 
I just see no talent in it, myself. Whoo hoo, I bought some other person's hard work. Sort of defeats the whole purpose of gaming in the first place. I say goodluck to people who buy stuff, though. If they're that stupid, they deserve what they get if they get caught or the item gets nerfed.
 
Another related extrapolation thing - When I played a Ranger in EQ2 my absolute favorite item wasn't my bow. It was a spear that I looted from some boss. My character wore it on his back and it carried me from like level 18-30. And I never saw another one like it for as long as I played that game.

I guess I'm more immersed/attached to things when I earn them as opposed to just buying them and would have a hard time forking them over like that. I think it crosses the line into that whole Second Life game thing. There was an article in reader's Digest a ways back of a Lady who consistantly earns like 150k per year in RL money from that game.

For me its a different aspect of the MMO genre for which there is an audience but its not something that i'd partake in.

That whole 'Buy game gold' and the selling of game accounts on Ebay thing sprang from that and companies saw that as a violation of the TOS and view it as a sort of Black Market I guess. They need to find a way to stop it and this was the result. Not to mention that some people were getting ripped of finding their accounts suspended for doing that kinda thing.

Now that it can be legal it still has a sort of strange taint to it that stears me away. Its another reason to have bounties on bots and macroheads imho. Servers that allow this have probably also at least reduced the number of script puppies allowing the rest to enjoy these games.
 
I don't do it, but I don't really care. They are the ones ruining THEIR gameplay. However, Nav was talking about BOP and stupid felgercarb like that. That is the one thing I do not like about people selling game items. The producers try andfind ways to stop it and then game play is ruined for everyone. In DAoC I had friends who would sometimes pass a nice axe down to me when I got close to it's level. You can't do this in games anymore because of restrictions. In DAoC, also along Nav's lines, you could use any weapon but it would not work as well and it would be destroyed faster and easier. That worked fine on making sure no ojne was using really good weapons at low level unless they didn't care about them. Today game developers just end up placing tons of restrictions on items that make gameplay sucky for everyone such as BoP BoE and level restrictions.
 
I didnt think BoP was a big problem in WoW, tho... As the droprate on everything was insanely high, so getting a nice item yourself was never a problem, as long as you PLAYED the game. I do agree on the feeling, not be able to hand over weapons to lower level guildmates, but helping them in an instance to get a nice weapon, is as simple.
 
I dunno. I think loot should be simple. The sword a level 1 person uses should be the same as the one a level 50 uses. It's just, obviously a level 50 would wreck a level 1 when armed with the same item.
I'm sick of gear stats in general. But that'd not appeal to the 'collection' gamers at all.
 
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