Zorom

The situation with RMT is simple and can be boiled down to the age old notion that: time = money. Many people are willing to use one in place of the other and generally speaking people with lots of one have little of the other.

If they can't make the exchange thru legal in game channels then they will use illegal channels. I admit I have bought gold online to use in-game to buy arena points from people in game for me and my friend's characters. Why did I do this? Because I didn't have the time to practice and get good at Arena or cultivate the relationships in game to get good partners to arena with. I wish I did but simple fact of life is, I have a good job that pays lots of $$ but leaves me with little time for hardcore gaming. Now if I had a legit way of converting my real world $$ into in game benefits (equipment/money/etc), I would have been happy to use that channel but since Blizzard does not offer it, I have to go thru other channels. It's simple supply and demand. Demand is and always will be there, if Blizzard doesn't supply it someone else will.

The way I see it, there are two groups of people who are the most vocal complainers about RMT:

1) Those without the means to benefit from RMT and don't want their in game power to be diminished by those who can benefit.
2) Those who are gaming purists who feel everything has to be gained in game to mean something.

Group 1 should be ignored since their complaint is fueled by simple jealously. Group 2's worries can be solved by making certain items obtainable in game only (ie legendaries, progress tier gear) thus still creating incentives for hardcore players to keep playing.

RMT is here to stay and as long as only illegal channels exist to satisfy the demand, game companies will continue fighting a futile losing battle to stop them.

A fair price is one people are willing to pay for the product.

A business will always charge as much as they believe their target consumer will pay for their product and so they will cover their costs and make enough profit to expand/satisfy investors. That is how businesses are supposed to operate. No business that only charges what it costs to run the business is ever successful on any meaningful scale.

Sounds like a little class envy on your part. For most people earning average pay, $15/month makes MMOs the cheapest form of entertainment by far. In comparison, baseball tickets can cost $50 a pop and provide entertainment for maybe 3 hrs. $15/month for up to 30x24hrs is a pretty good deal in comparison.

People will pay what they think the end product is worth, simple economics. The company simply provides a quality product and charges what they believe will get them to their target. If you don't feel its worth it or can't afford, then you have the choice to not play the game. Based on the tone of your comment, you sound like you think you are entitled to play the game at a price you want. So vote with your wallet and don't play, just know that people with bigger wallets will probably outvote you in this case as we feel it is worth the money.

Zar, I think you misunderstand me.

"As far as Zorom's argument that they should let you make money in real life to entice a player to pay for entertainment; why? You go to a sports facility and pay for a ticket, however it does not entitle you to run a concession or even a gambling operation simply because you paid for the ticket."

I never said anything about making money IRL from the game. I was referring to people who already make plenty of money outside of the game and want to be able to use it for entertainment purposes. Per your sports analogy, my statement is the equivalent basically asking blizzard to give us the option to buy better tickets (equipment) to enjoy the game more (entertainment value). To use baseball tickets as an example, why limit everyone to buying nosebleed section when there exists customers like me who can afford and are willing to buy tickets for the seats behind homeplate and are fine with spending additional $50 for overpriced hotdogs and beer?

$15/month for entertainmant makes a MMO basically the cheapest form of entertainment by far. $15, that's 2 drinks in a NYC bar before tip which usually lasts me anywhere from 1hr to 2hrs. Back when I played WoW the hours of entertainment I got out of that would be the equivalent of spending several hundreds of dollars at the bar on a monthly basis. I would gladly pay $50/month and have cash shop on top of that for in game equipment that I would drop another $50 a month and it'd still be cheaper than every other form of entertainment out there on a $/hr basis.

My main gripe with MMOs these days is that it doesn't allow people who are successful (make lots of $$$) out of game to use said success to increase the quality of their play time in game. I could drop $100/month on a video game like WoW and it wouldn't make a dent in my budget. For some gamers, that could mean the difference between making their rent and being homeless. What I don't have is 40 hrs a week that I can devote to the game to raid/farm/instance grind. Why not let me pay what I'm willing to pay and make more profits while allowing me to improve my in game experience?

And making lots of RL money doesn't take some skill? Money doesn't fall from the sky, buddy.

And its not cheating. Cheating would be suddenly becoming godlike and being able to one shot everyone. I never ever said to allow game breaking items be sold via the store (ie you can't buy a legendary). RMT items should always be a step behind current content. Its simply trading time for money. I'd rather spend my 50 hrs on other things that would either make me more money or give me more enjoyment than 50 hrs grinding out honor. RMT should get you near the top but real play time should always be a requirement to be the top.

It ends when people don't feel the product is worth the price. Simple as that. Server Transfer/Race Change service, the reason they charge that is to make sure people make a conscience decision at the character creation window to not take it lightly. It also saves time, instead of rerolling and recollecting items/xp/keys etc, you can switch server/races. Is $25 worth the amount of time it would take you to completely recreate your character into a new server/race? I think so. It comes back to time versus my money. Do I grind out the requisite 50K honor or pay blizzard $50 for a full set of honor gear. I would pay the $50 in a heartbeat.

I agree that Blizz makes tons of money, but that doesn't mean they can't make more from people like me WILLING to pay for certain things. It comes down to implementation. A good implementation gives both sides, players and Blizzard, something. As long as you don't introduce game breaking items into the MT stores, ie no best in slots, no raid progression advantages, no top of the line arena gear. MT isn't a tax to play, its a choice offered by the content creator. Do you pay extra to skip ahead or pay nothing additional and continue playing as normal. Those with money and limited play time will choose the former while those with more time will choose the latter. Like you said, vote with your wallet and my wallet would happily go to Blizzard.

Corrections to my horribly rushed and grammatically atrocious prior post and a few additions:

So allowing people who are financially stable and able to purchase a unique vanity item is going to affect the vast majority of the players how? And itwill give Blizzard an additional revenue source. How is this bad?

Blizz makes more profit from those who have disposable income to burn and thus makes the shareholders happy. Happy shareholders leave Blizzard alone to do their thing and produce great games. People with money to burn get something fun and entertaining to burn it on. Poor people get a bad case of penis envy which does not take away from their gaming experience at all. People can now tell who has an extra $10 to burn on silly vanity pets. Sounds to me like poor people to get over themselves and realize, not all gamers are poor or see spending $10 on a vanity item as a bad thing. Blizz can take all the money I care to give them since in the end it will help them keep running as a corporation. I am a consumer and I am voting with my wallet. If Blizz gives me the option to buy some decent gear that I'd otherwise have to grind for, I will happily plunk down the requisite cash. Its nice being able to use the fruits of my labor (financial stability and prosperity) to make my gaming experience more enjoyable (enjoying content with decent gear without endless grinding).

So allowing people who are financially stable and able to purchase a unique vanity item is going to affect the vast majority of the players and will give Blizzard an additional revenue source? How is this bad?

Blizz makes more profit from those who have disposable income to burn and thus makes the shareholders happy. Happy shareholders leave blizzard alone to do their thing and produce great games. People with money to burn get something fun and entertaining to burn it on. Poor people get a bad case of class envy which does not take away from their gaming experience at all. People can be tell who has an extra $10 to burn on silly vanity pets. Sounds to me like poor people to get over themselves and realize, not all gamers are poor and don't see spending $10 on a vanity item as a bad thing. Blizz can take all the money I care to give them since in the end it will help them keep running as a corporation.

Its simply giving the customer what they want, IMO.

Two things people need to consider is A) Available Playtime and B) Player real money income. Everyone has varying amounts of the two and its usually inversely related. People either have lots of A but little B or vice versa.

Most gear/items in this game is gotten thru having a good amount of time. So having microtransactions for gear is simply giving those with lots of money the option to use it to get to somewhat the same level of gear as those with lots of time. Is that so bad? I am in the boat where I have a good amount of money but not as much time. Should my ability to play the game with a level of gear that I'm happy with be penalized simply because I can't spend the requisite grinding time in game to gather up the gear. Example, I enjoy PVP but I don't have the time to spend grinding out all the honor to get the honor gear before the it becomes obsolete. What if I could drop $50 to get a full set of honor gear? I would do so without hesitation since it would save me hours of grinding and allow me to pvp at a level I enjoy (not getting one shotted).

My only caveat is that the best gear in the current game should still only be attainable via in game time, ie current progression raid gear, current season arena gear. But everything else like prior arena season gear, prior raid tier gear, should be fair game. Also everything purchasable with money should attainable in game as well. This way, balance is retained and the simple difference will be, those with no time but lots of money can play at a non-gimped gear level in comparison to the population with too much time on their hands. It gives the player the options of trading one resource (money) at their disposal for another (time).

The whole subscription can not have micro transactions. Both can be worked into the same game as long as money does not unbalance the game. Those who have the time will simply keep grinding and can attain the best gear, while those with money will simply decide their own time is more valuable and will spend the fraction of money their time is truely worth to get mroe out of what little time they get to play. Everyone wins IMO. Who loses? Those with no time and no money? They really shouldn't be playing in the first place!