RMT is too legit to quit. Hammer time.

The real money trade topic stops here again… This topic won’t go away; it’ll be oft-discussed, glazed over, resuscitated again and again to be only horribly killed off in some fashionable way until the next press wire strikes a chord. This post makes it the fifth RMT related post for 2007. That’s not bad for as much as I slack.

Some relative points before hammer time: (More or less the garbage I need to take out before I deposit my thoughts into a bigger cesspool.)

I used to hate RMT. I loathed it and wanted to punch it in its fat sweaty ball sacks. (RMT has big’uns too, I don’t know how, but it does.) I boycotted MMOG companies who embraced its legitimacy. I pontificated with justice against them as greedy, foolish suits with dollar signs in their eyes that cared about nothing else but the bottom line. Weak, I know. I wasn’t as forgiving in my fun-filled tirade days, and a suit is still a suit, so don’t go thinking I’m jumping in bed with Yantis like a cheap gold-farming hooker.

I have grown older, not up, but older. Opinions change over time, and that time is normally occupied outside the basement. No longer is my every waking moment spent lollygagging about and working on the Ultimate MMOG Quest: Collect Infinite Heart Containers. Because that’s what it all boils down to, MMOGs are never-ending ladders. Players go up, up, and up some more… There’s always something, even when there isn’t. This really is an evil and sometimes addicting genre. When does it end? You bloody well club yourself in the head and cancel the damn subscription, there is no other end to the madness.

Where I stand now on MMOG companies putting a price on time and offering in-game incentives at a real world cost is with the developers. I’m a firm believer that this is up to the developers. I know. I know, boring… If the developers want an RMT enabled game, legitimized, that’s their business. I don’t have to play it, and I don’t like most MMOGs (mainly the webby shit) that are heavily RMT based, especially when RMT is interjected into the Diku-kind, the RPG kind where you bash foozles or collect asshats to turn into the next static quest dispenser. However, games that are designed around RMT from the conceptualization stage I find perfectly acceptable. Some, I do enjoy to play on occasion such as Legends of Norrath. I would never play that game if it required a subscription fee, but you won’t see me dropping buckets of cash on boosters either.

I do have a bone to pick if a MMOG starts out RMT free and the developers say their game won’t support it and later they reverse their stance and implement some type of legitimacy. That’s jacked, especially to those players that stood against RMT. If I played that game I’d be right there in the throng of hooligans; waving my pitchfork in unison demanding that those responsible be impaled. As for MMOGs that have tried everything else up to implementing RMT and other revenue streams completely failed and the only other recourse is to go belly-up. Well, I’d say implemented RMT after the fact is justified in those extreme cases.

As for MMOGs not on the cusp of death and some type of RMT creeping in, it really depends on the implementation. EVE Online allows you to trade Game Time Codes for ISK, in game money. Since players obtain Game Time Codes with real world dollars this is essentially a well disguised RMT market that is legitimized by CCP. You can even trade ISK for Characters. If you don’t have that ISK, buy more codes and get some. There you have it, before I played EVE I got all huffy when I read about this and thought, well that’s fucked up, but now that I play the game I don’t think it’s a big deal, and I have yet to buy ISK myself. A player would have to shell out a shit load of cash to really get ahead in EVE.

Guild Wars allows you to purchase skill and item packs. I think this is worse than buying GTC and trading for ISK, but I don’t play Guild Wars. My opinion might be different if I did. I know that I would try to obtain those skill packs on my own first. If EVE had skill bundles to bypass their time allotted training costs that you could pay for with ISK, such as all the learning skills bundled into one for say 500k ISK, or a blatant real dollar price tag, I’d probably quit the game. I do believe a lot of players would support the ISK version though.

As for the big news that caused me to make this post, Live Gamer, the real money trade market built directly into the game ala Auction House style. It makes sense that the guys who were responsible (Massive Ads) for striking deals with the advertisers and game companies to inject crappy Ads into games. These guys got a huge payday when they sold it to Microsoft now they are responsible for Live Gamer—evil bastards! I’m actually shocked it took this long for someone to jump in bed with MMOG companies who embrace legit RMT practices. Would I play a Diku based game with this implemented? I highly doubt it. I do have questions though: Which MMOG is going to support it and on what servers?

Blizzard already said no, screw RMT altogether. Good for them. But SOE in particular has players asking many questions that need answering. They support RMT on their own EQ2 Station Exchange servers. Will they allow in-game sales and items on other servers through Live Gamer? As for SOE’s future, they are rolling out the red carpet; players get to buy their way through. Remember, they even hired former IGE blood. Smed has talked about SOE’s plans in great detail already. Many of their unreleased MMOGs will be RMT based. Their support comes as no surprise. Oh well…