The Daily Grind: When does RMT cross the line?

by Shawn Schuster on Apr 9th 2009 8:00AM

Business models, Culture, Economy, Game mechanics, Opinion, The Daily Grind

This question was posed yesterday by Saylah at the Mystic Worlds blog, and we couldn't help but wonder the same ourselves. When RMT or micro-transactions are first introduced as a business model for a game, the claim is always that these items for sale are not detrimental to the actual gameplay itself. They're cosmetic, or they aid your character with convenience items like extra bag space or a faster mount. But as Saylah points out, Runes of Magic has introduced crafting items to their Item Shop recently. This allows players to purchase bundles of resources for crafting, which gives an advantage towards things like guild castles. "My first reaction is to suspect that the massive grind in this area is intentional to encourage the purchase of the resources now available in the Item Shop," she says.

So what do you feel is going too far in RMT purchases? Is selling crafting resources too much, or would you only raise an eyebrow at the sale of overpowered weapons in an RMT shop? With the popularity of micro-transactions, do you think developers will edge closer and closer to that line to see what they can get away with? Let us know your thoughts!

Tags: item-shop, micro-transactions, microtransactions, mystic-worlds, real-money-trading, rmt, saylah, the-daily-grind

Reader Comments (22)

Curious that many of the people responding here don't seem to have played RoM (including the post author?). If you had played it, you'd realize how utterly stupid the offering being made in the cash shop was. I don't doubt that a few people paid it, however in terms of grind savings, the offering amounts to saving 3 or so hours worth of resource gathering time in exchange for paying around $10.

Intelligent people don't pay $10 to save 3 hours worth of grinding. To save 40 hours, maybe...but not 3. On top of that, the amount of materials you could buy in the cash shop was nearly negligible to the amount needed to build a guild castle (the supposed purpose). And further, the price of the resources in the cash shop was higher than the prices being demanded by other players in the game's auction house.

If you ask me, it was a huge whiff of an idea. Again, I don't doubt a few people paid it, but there's a sucker born every minute, and it's certainly not the kind of game breaker that the post and comments here would lead you to believe.

Oh, and a final note on the crafting materials to enlighten the ignorant: in RoM all crafted items are crafted via refined materials. In order to refine the higher level materials offered, the player needs to have established an equally high gathering skill, which can only be accomplished by grinding up that gathering skill, for which there is absolutely no short cut, other than to put in the time. If you've put in that time, you can't possibly think saving an additional 3 hrs for $10 has any merit.

Actually, that's a relative statement there. paying 10$ to save 3
hours may be more intelligent based on the more intelligent you are
(or the more your intelligence or hard work gets you paid). For
example, 10 dollars comes out to about 10 minutes worth of work for
me (not exactly, but real close, probably closer to 18-20 minutes
considering taxes and paycheck deductions) . 10-20 minutes worth of
work to pay for 3 hours of grind to get onto the other fun stuff is a
pretty intelligent trade-of, but that's just my opinion.

It's a good point on who benefits more from RMT. The guy making
minimum wage part-time is going to benefit more over the 3 hours of
grind time than using RMT. The guy making 6 figures annually and not
having nearly as much time to grind is going to benefit more from RMT
than grinding since his time is more valuable/limited and just wants
to get playing with the others that have more time. it's not for
everyone just like the grind isn't for everyone.

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