Jeremy Stratton

@(Unverified) Hey, everyone! I've been semi-regularly livestreaming Atlantica Online, each week. Check the MV Guide, each Monday to see the new schedule, to see if and when I'm livestreaming it.

It's strategic, turn-based battles make it a great candidate for ranking and championship/tournament style gameplay. It's a big out-of-game feature that they regularly hold championships(or did?).

The fights are all compact enough, that it makes for great Internet Televsions, to watch some matches and listen to how the strategies are unfolding, guessing the opponents decisions and so forth.

http://massively.joystiq.com/category/mv-guide/

Here's one of my previous Atlantica Online livestreams.

http://www.twitch.tv/massivelytv/b/310729517

@jeremys Also, it costs so much because of the inflation. It used to be between 4 and 10k per diamond in RoM, but inflation occured and that's the possible inflation danger I spoke of, which compounds those who want items in the cash-shop, like those who want items in RoM's. It used to be much easier and less gold to obtain the same thing it now takes much longer to get, the free way, because prices are much higher.

@avidlurker Both are supplying power. One is acting somewhat indirectly, the other just a bit more directly. Which leads to my inclusion of "value" instead of "power".

I don't like pay-to-win because it's really not about power it's about value. XP pots aren't pay to win "if you place no value in the journey".

GW2 may take away the value of power via gearing up, but there has to be value somewhere. Where will it be? Where ever that turns out to be, maybe more value will be placed on the journey now(?), will become where pay-to-win matters. I don't think pay-to-win vanishes if the need for power vanishes.

It's only my opinion, but the belief in the term is not pay-to-be-strong. it's to 'win'. If winning is really only about power, and only some people cared about it in that respect, the term probably wouldn't have been born in the first place - just like no "fashion-to-win" was created by those that care more about fashion than combat, and there are a lot of players that care about other things and not combat.

@(Unverified) It makes it more attractive. The security measures that ANet takes will decide how well it gets exploited or not, just like the many different ways hacking gets through. Whether it's called "hacking" or by definition something else, it's an illegal method to circumvent the nature of the game to increase the amount of something from the game.

In this case the attraction goes up, and you also provide an extra avenue. The working example was Runes of Magic's method which did act identical to this method GW2 is supposedly using. Credit card fraud, or laundering, was reported to get bad enough that they removed it while they sought alternate modes of policing it.

It was also very hard to police because the gold-sellers and players were using the auction house and it became hard to tell which players were breaking the rules, which were actually bots or gold-sellers and which were legit players finding alternate ways to utilize the system.

Some players in RoM found that they could store items and use it as extra storage(because RoM sold extra bags and I believe GW2 may do it - many MMOs do). So they'd list there items for ridiculous amounts of gold. Gold-sellers did the same thing for the purpose of shunting money around.

Checking buy/sell records wasn't much help because there are legit players who will spend very large amounts of money on the game.

I'm not saying it's cut and dry, or that ANet won't be able to police it, but it's these are just a few potential problems.

This system will not curtail gold-selling though. It actually throws it in everyone's face, every second, making it more prominent, and it can be more attractive to sellers and buyers and players. And gold-sellers only had to simply undercut in RoM. They were able to easily undercut the in-game, closed-off economic prices that stabilized in the beginning.

I think GW2 is on to something by capping stuff, though. Capping gear and everything is a good start.

@(Unverified) Players will still argue the pay-to-win debate. If a player wants something and places any value on that, and the cash-shop can circumvent or speed that up for others with money, they'll see it as unfair. It doesn't matter if it's fashion or combat.

Convenience is a tricky term as well. In RoM, Purified Fusion Stones allow a person to more quickly put stats on armor with no "dirty" stats. These "puri's" are available through the game, as well as dirty stats which can still get you through content, and with the ability to trade gold for diamonds, in-game, the item it technically a convenience that just speeds the process.

You can actually botch a piece of armor if you don't use the puri correctly, free players can save up gold to buy them from paying players and it technically just speeds up the process of gearing, like a craft booster, but RoM is touted as being "The most expensive and cashy cash-shop game on the market". Go figure.

@(Unverified) I have no idea(?) I don't know anything about the leak or what Rubi did. I don't know anymore today than I did when I wrote this.

I have no idea(?) I don't know anything about the leak or what Rubi did. I don't know anymore today than I did when I wrote this.

Some people were asking about the source of the fraud and why it would be worse with this system.

Those are some excellent questions and while no one ever knows business news, until its made public to everyone, I'd like to mention how this system can increase the desire for people to break the law.

You know have a system that allows you to buy gems, go into the game and post those gems on the auction house for a set amount of gold.

Could gold-sellers do that before? Before, they hacked others accounts, relied on people caving and buying from them, first and I'm sure there's a percentage of sellers that use a mixture of hacking, stolen programs/accounts, legit programs and any which way they can.

But now. They have a way to make a lot of money, quickly. All they have to do is get a hold of gems to sell for vast amounts of gold, or vice-versa. The easiest way to do that is conduct credit card fraud.

Now there's a new goal, and you can be other players will do this as well. All you need to do is credit card fraud to generate the funds to buy the diamonds and BAM.

Anyone that took Business 101 or has worked in places knows that it, yes, can be made hard, but for those that are already breaking the law can also find easy ways to do this.

It's an increase in security threats.

Frogster reported this happened in Runes of Magic and that's why they removed the ability to buy/sell diamonds in its auction house.

@jeremys Also, purified fusion stones, which lead to upgrading clean gear in RoM is and I think rightfully, defendable as "a convenience item", because it was a tool that could ruin or better your armor, if you didn't know how to use it.

And, because the supposed issue of it being made available to those with time to get gold and buy it through the marketplace, it becomes attainable for those to even the playing field.

These items are and will always be hotly debated as whether they add to pay to win or if they are just time-savers(because non-payers can save up gold and get them, right?).

But, I know from experience, that all the problems I wrote about in the article are concerns, and botting will still happen, inflation could still happen.

We will have to wait and see how the game-design values your fun and where it places importance. Importance might not even be on power, but players will find importance somewhere, and that's an audience worth selling something to.

I thought I'd add some information to the article.

Adding real currency in this special manner does one unique thing to the in-game market in Runes of Magic: It provides and comparable scale of value for everything in the game. Any item suddenly obtains a substantial value in real money and because they can be traded, bought and sold with other items(assuming they can in GW2), they will provide real monetary value for each other.

A level 5 sword suddenly is able to be calculated against a level 50 sword and a real world price determined and that can be affected by supply and demand. It becomes part of the equation.

So, when inflation hit Runes of Magic, and a valuable item skyrocketed upward by untold percentages(some 1 million gold items shot up to 200+million gold) that didn't mean other items were unaffected, it shifted value for everything, because money was part of the equation for the entire marketplace. This was true of consumables as well.