Why/how is RMT surviving in this game?

cjmarsh725b14_ESO

Silowyi wrote: »

cjmarsh725b14_ESO wrote: »

Apparently you have a lot of gold and you have leveled quickly. Congratulations, that makes you a minority in the game. Many people don't play long hours and haven't leveled enough to reach veteran ranks, or to obtain the kind of income that makes gold seem useless to end-game players like you. This creates a pool of players among whom are inevitably those who will break the rules for their own convenience. Thus, the demand for RMT and the existence of gold sellers in virtually every successful mmo ever made.

I have gold ( a lot? I have no way to measure if it's a lot... 60k maybe) because I craft everything I need and save my coin. I don't understand the argument about not having a lot of time to play. If you don't have time to play you can't be very high level and therefore don't need a lot of money. I'm not saying that as an insult, I don't judge people by their level, the key is if you're having fun.

Even if I were level 20, which I was at one point, I still don't see what there is to buy that would justify using RMT. Yes, a horse is expensive, I had one day 1 from the Imperial pack and honestly, I seldom use it. I'm not in a hurry and by travelling mostly by foot I don't miss a lot of the resources you might miss going at a faster speed.

I'm almost always on foot... what's the hurry? And maybe that has helped me save more coin.

I think the primary motivation and rationale for people who buy gold is both the convenience and the price. For less than the price of the horse that Zenimax sells in the store they can have two horses with better stats. Also, if someone doesn't have time to play it can lead to falling behind the curve, especially if you're playing with friends or with people in a guild. I don't think people who buy gold are playing the game to enjoy the scenery and experience, but to get ahead quickly.

Elsonso

Offering for sale implies buying, but does not prove it.

While there may be a large amount of activity trying to get people to buy, I honestly question how many people are currently buying.

The game is 31 days old and, quite frankly, people are just beginning to understand what is valuable, other than gold.

I don't think that there is really a booming market to buy stuff right now. There may be a few early takers in the game, but I think that right now all that is happening is advertizing, to attract potential customers, and materials gathering in anticipation of future demand for both gold and items.

KerinKor

I don't know how it's done either, in FFXIV item wear is based on XP earned, on the face of it kind of bizarre but it does ensure everyone pays and can't avoid it as @Darzil is looking to do here.

Aci

Silowyi wrote: »

I have gold ( a lot? I have no way to measure if it's a lot... 60k maybe) because I craft everything I need and save my coin. I don't understand the argument about not having a lot of time to play. If you don't have time to play you can't be very high level and therefore don't need a lot of money. I'm not saying that as an insult, I don't judge people by their level, the key is if you're having fun.

Even if I were level 20, which I was at one point, I still don't see what there is to buy that would justify using RMT. Yes, a horse is expensive, I had one day 1 from the Imperial pack and honestly, I seldom use it. I'm not in a hurry and by travelling mostly by foot I don't miss a lot of the resources you might miss going at a faster speed.

I'm almost always on foot... what's the hurry? And maybe that has helped me save more coin.

A very sympathic post. There are always these impatient people that will buy from goldsellers. "Oh I only bought gold once to buy me a mount" is what I happened to read. Why do these guys play mmorpgs? Really! No one will change these people, but I hope Zenimax will never fall for their posts.

"Make this and that easier, gimme free respects, free mounts, gimme treasure though I didnt participate, gimme max level with one mouse click"...woah!

Silowyi

Shillen wrote: »

Ker.Rakb16_ESO wrote: »

To be fair, the average thrifty player becomes filthy rich around level 35 or so. If you keep an eye on repair costs, you can buy pretty much everything you could possibly want by VR 2-3.

Yeah, no. Haven't bought a single thing other than inventory space, horses and 1 respec and I'm certainly not rolling in money. I very rarely die too and I never ever pay to teleport anywhere. I'm guessing you're riding around on your crappy white horse or something. I didn't get imp edition so I bought the 43k horse for 3 different characters now.

If you have paid 43k times 3 for horses, you're doing just fine in the wealth department.

I wouldn't insult someone for making good use of their "crappy white horse"... works fine for me especially with the 30 storage upgrades I have given it so far. I'll only buy the swifter horses when they fix Cyrodiil and I'm ready to spend time in PvP. With all the wayshrines in the game there isn't anywhere I need that much speed for.

D34thly

RMT love this game everything is stupid expensive. RMT are in EVERY single MMO no matter the age. FFXI for one you get tells from RMT all the time that game was released in 2003. Wow has RMT EQ's have RMT, Rift, TSW.. If more than one person plays the game there are RMT. Nothing will ever change this. If you can buy things and can't cheat to get cash people will spend their hard earned money on virtual goods.

Maleficus

I can tell exactly who is buying the gold, people with disposable cash and limited time to play this game. I am sure there are other types of players that do it as well for other reasons. If you stop and think about it, people who have good jobs, busy lives but wanna get down on some ESO but can't *** around harvesting gold other ways; just buy some. Saves time and lets them focus on the game itself for what little time they have to play it.

We are talking about Americans here, they got money to spend because they are good little workers, intense consumers and they live in a world where immediate satisfaction is the name of the game,,,

CaptainSilverbrow

Schmackei wrote: »

All up though, sitting on anymore than about 20k gold is just saving it for no reasonable reason.

I guess we shouldn't be allowed to respec' more than 200 skillpoints at a time, then and keep some gold afterward, as concluded by you and your unique but shortsighted power of "reasonable reasoning"? Or buy one of those exorbitantly priced Daedric Motifs, if they so choose? Or perhaps one of the game's 42,000 gold mounts? You aren't the virtual market's master, don't expand your collectivist platitudes beyond passive musing and expect to hold up in any discourse about this topic without all your bases first thoroughly secured.

KerinKor wrote: »

RMT is a massive industry, research the likes of IGE or those plaguing ESO right now, their revenues are hundreds of millions of dollars a year.

This fellow understands. Gentlemen, even this game is not profiting the RMT cartel, the industry is so large in scope, they themselves may not even have fully tested the waters just yet. But KerinKor (And Darzil, thank you) elucidated rather concisely just why, unfortunately, these groups may actually be profiting quite well in ESO's market; for a nascent game, the developers have done a swell job inflating the market. Those mounts and the price of respec'ing in tandem might have established the precedent for the market as it is.

Silowyi

Maleficus wrote: »

I can tell exactly who is buying the gold, people with disposable cash and limited time to play this game. I am sure there are other types of players that do it as well for other reasons. If you stop and think about it, people who have good jobs, busy lives but wanna get down on some ESO but can't *** around harvesting gold for other ways just buy some. Saves time and lets them focus on the game itself for what little time they have to play it.

We are talking ab out Americans here, they got money to spend because they are good little workers and consumers and they live in a world where immediate satisfaction is the name of the game,,,

While there may be some truth in what you say, please don't lump all of us Americans into that boat. Contrary to what you might hear otherwise, we're just people too. RMT is huge all over the world so let's leave that demographic out of it.

Maleficus

I realize I am stereo typing and generalizing a bit, but my point is people want *** the easy way. If you can spend a few dollars to save huge amounts of time on something most will do it...

vyal

How? There are exploitive ways in which gold can be used. In particular, related to research and respec's.

Therefore, gold in massive quantities is in high demand. Close the exploits, the demand reduces.

Of course, Zenimax could always just stop accepting credit cards from outside the target geographic play area. But I digress.

steveb16_ESO46

RMT might be in every MMO but I have never seen them make such an impact on a game as this. Unfortunately so much of the game design leaves it open to easy botting. I played LOTRO for years and barely ever saw anything I even suspected was a bot.

But LOTRO instanced dungeons so even if there were bots grinding away we never would encounter them.

Instancing public dungeon final encounters, restricting loot drops to once or twice a day and not including whatever features allow bots to teleport around from Day 1 would go a long way to stopping this.

But they are belatedly fighting back and getting some wins. i'd be a little more optimistic if bots I reported weeks ago weren't still in the game and in the case of one - sending the gold pm's that caused the latest ruckus.

CaptainSilverbrow

Darzil wrote: »

At launch, the game was practically designed for gold farmers rather than players !

I've derisively implied this in multiple gold spammer/farmer /reports, actually. I'm even begun to speculate if this is the case, and if it isn't related to subsidizing the cost of disk manufacture.

UrQuan

Well, between horses (the good ones cost quite a bit, and those daily feedings do add up eventually), inventory (I've probably spent a total of 80-100K on bag and bank space between my characters), repairs (bills seem to vary wildly between players, ranging from reasonable to massively more than you can earn in the time it took to rack up the repair bill), and respecs (I haven't ever done this or really looked into it so I'm not 100% clear on the cost involved) there are some hefty gold sinks in the game, even outside of buying items from other players. I can understand why there would be a market for gold sellers. Personally I've never been tempted to buy gold with real money because those guys can go to hell.

Maleficus

I still say they should just sell gold in game with daily/weekly/monthly limits to help keep the economy stable. They would also have to sell it much cheaper than the farmers can so it no longer makes business sense to sell in this game . I like to think this would provide the casual player with limited time a legit way to get some gold for repairs or a piece a gear so they can enjoy the 2-5 hours a week they actually can find time to play...

Vhalkyrie

There's no risk to the gold sellers. They're just using stolen credit card numbers (most likely from the dimwits who buy gold) to purchase the accounts in order to advertise. Chinese prisoners were made to farm gold in WoW, so there's no labor costs and whenever they manage to snag a sucker, it's pure profit to them. They wouldn't be doing it if there wasn't demand.

The people who buy the gold are probably people who are bad with money anyhow, and can never seem to keep any money to upgrade their banks or buy mounts. So they buy gold from gold spammers. People who would give their credit card details to these shady outfits can't make good decisions with their real money, nevermind in game.

Schmackei

CaptainSilverbrow wrote: »

... to respec' more than 200 skillpoints at a time ...

you are right, I did not take this into consideration.

CaptainSilverbrow wrote: »

... Or buy one of those exorbitantly priced Daedric Motifs ...

Yeah, happily seen them in zone chat in The Riften all week for around 12 - 18k.

UrQuan

Vhalkyrie wrote: »

People who would give their credit card details to these shady outfits can't make good decisions with their real money, nevermind in game.

Quoted for truth. That's the other part of why I wouldn't buy gold from these guys. I guess there are ways around that (preloaded "gift" credit cards with only a small balance), but still.

Maleficus

@Vhalkyrie,That is all a bunch of ***.. There are no doubt many shady gold sellers out there, there is also a legion of successful ones that run clean business with their consumers..

People who buy gold 9 times out of ten are people with limited time to game.. They are not dumb or inept with money.

Gisgo

Silowyi wrote: »

I don't get it. What is is that people are buying that requires them to turn to RMT?

Daedra hearts, motifs, rekutas, gear sets... theres a lot of stuff to buy if you want to.

KerinKor

steveb16_ESO46 wrote: »

RMT might be in every MMO but I have never seen them make such an impact on a game as this. Unfortunately so much of the game design leaves it open to easy botting. I played LOTRO for years and barely ever saw anything I even suspected was a bot.

Early on there were many bots running around, Champions in the deserted village near Oatbarton in the Shire were notorious, and spam /yells and mail were pretty common.

That said, Turbine took serious action, BANNED BUYERS and made most botting impossble. I've played since pre-release and still do, I've not seen hide nor tail of RMT for a long time. It still exists of course, your favourite RMT establishment will sell you LOTRO gold just as happily as Rift Plat, FFXIV Gil or ESO gold, but RMT's effects on normal players is close to zero.

Of all the games I play (7 ATM) LOTRO is the only one I can truly say doesn't allow RMT to impact me at all: and yes, I'm well aware of their impact on the economy but that's minimal none, mainly because the potential BUYERS are too scared to risk buying.

Reenlister

I really enjoy these post about the money issue.
Two simple kinds of post.
People explaining why you don't need to buy gold, which you really don't, I keep seeing the moaning over the 42k horse, hey, you don't need it, so either save up, or just get the smaller one. That was the idea, something to work toward.
Time is not even a remote factor, hey you don't have time to play everyday? Big deal, play when your here and enjoy the game and the earning your way up. Geez you really think your going to 'get ahead' by getting that horse 'right now!'
That is the other kind of post.
Simple defense of the fact the sellers are here because we need to buy it all right now. After all, I cant be wasting my time playing toward an end, I should be able to have my horse 'right now'.

dennissomb16_ESO

Maleficus wrote: »

@Vhalkyrie,That is all a bunch of ***.. There are no doubt many shady gold sellers out there, there is also a legion of successful ones that run clean business with their consumers..

People who buy gold 9 times out of ten are people with limited time to game.. They are not dumb or inept with money.

This is as wrong as wrong can get. There is no "clean" gold selling business from the very basic point that it is against the "TOS". None of these gold selling companies are legit so giving them your credit card is, and I am sorry to say "dumb or inept with money"

The bigger issue is gold selling has moved from people making a little cash to most of them being a part of or associated with organized cyber crime. These hackers no longer simply steal accounts for gold. they steal credit cards, passwords, banking information etc. and even if they only do gold selling business, they sell that other stolen information to organized crime. Nothing could be dumber then giving these people anything

KerinKor

Reenlister wrote: »

That is the other kind of post.
Simple defense of the fact the sellers are here because we need to buy it all right now. After all, I cant be wasting my time playing toward an end, I should be able to have my horse 'right now'.

I see no 'defense' in this thread .. or are you confusing an explanation for a defense?

Maleficus

I am not saying how they get their product is legal or ethical, but the consumers who buy their product would not continue to buy if it were that big of a risk..

When I was younger and worked 10 hour days and also played WOW and wanted to run 40 man raids I bought gold for repairs because I did not have time to harvest it in game.. I bought gold many times from many vendors and never once got my credit information stolen and never once did I not get the gold.. Not something I liked doing but it let me raid... People will not continue to buy gold from farmers if the farmers are ripping everyone off and stealing cc info.. I realize this kinda thing happens and likely often but RMT industry as a whole could not prosper as it has if that were the case,,, No business that habitually steals from its customers will last..

WilliamTee

Threads like this are all based on the premise that there is some significant cost associated with setting up bots/gold spamming accounts.

Bans only really cost these organisations time.

The time it takes to set up another account.

Maleficus

I think these people are more organized than you think. I don't pretend to know how much it costs them to do this or how big this industry actually is..

What I see is well orchestrated relentless tactics by very large numbers of in game workers. It is costing someone money and time to do this. There are clearly many groups/companies doing it. Some running like a business does and some more like criminal organizations etc.. They put huge amounts of effort into it as they have the game companies actively trying to stop them the whole time..

So it must make a lot of money to make it worth the effort it likely takes. When rich powerful people see a way to make money they turn it into a business.. RMT is an industry not just a bunch of eastern dudes ripping people off...

Not advocating it or anything just looking at what I see..

Darzil

KerinKor wrote: »

I don't know how it's done either, in FFXIV item wear is based on XP earned, on the face of it kind of bizarre but it does ensure everyone pays and can't avoid it as @Darzil is looking to do here.

I'm not looking to avoid it. I'm pointing out that for some the cost of repairing is higher than the gain from doing content, unless you deliberately reduce that cost (as the defenders of the current levels of wear are suggesting in the armour decay thread).

It's normal for an MMO to need to tune the economy in the early days. It's not an easy task, especially when you have had dupes that significantly unbalanced the economy. If you tune gold sinks to remove that additional income, you penalise those who didn't "take advantage" of the bugs.

I didn't, but some are now running out of money trying to repair their equipment. Replacing your equipment every time you visit town rather than repairing it works, but is unintuitive, so players will fall foul of playing the game without trying to maximise their income/expenditure.

Soloeus

Are gold buyers getting punished?

Edit; I am level 43 and still broke.

ZeBlade

RMT has been in mmos for years but I've never seen this many bots. And 1.06 patch won't effect this at all. Remember this is a billion dollar business.

You don't put this much effort into this unless allot are buying and now you can buy almost anything from them.

Sorry but this is one of the most easiest mmos I have ever played. My son got to 50 well over a week ago and he quit already. He really didn't want to replay a newbie zone all over again. He loves world so warcraft and we are not even in the same league as hard core players. Share one account. So that was just playing a few hours a day.

He never bought a horse (had white one). Has like just over 6k at 50. Was in 5 guilds. As a side note all new about the dupes. So don't think for one second it was just a handful that did all that. Me I am in no guilds..I don't need to buy anything. For the 1st time I can make anything and I get greens and blues every day.. just WAAAAY to easy.