Actually, I disagree that the existence of such third-party vendors is a bad thing. From an economic perspective, such companies simply level the playing field by fixing a persistent and stupid balance problem in MMORPGs: these games are typically designed to reward social rejects and unproductive members of society. I’ll explain. In order to level up in most MMORPGs, the secret is to forgo all the “fun” activities associated with online gaming and instead engage in “grinding,” the repetitive, goal-directed pursuit of leveling, typically by repeating the same meaningless activity over, and over, and over again. So far, this sounds like it rewards focused players with a good work ethic, and it does – but only work in the context of the game, which is actually a problem on a larger scale. Individuals who can afford to spend all night spawn camping can do so because they have an abundance of one resource (time) and a shortage of another (productive activities outside of the gameworld). So when you complain that one person ground their way to a high-level character by neglecting, work, life, and family whereas another simply traded a relatively small amount of a different resource (money) which they had in relative abundance for a similar result, I know immediately which one I’d prefer to be. So go ahead and spend 100 hours grinding your dark elf warlock to level 40 – I’ll be spending 100 dollars (the equivalent of about three hours of work, after taxes) buying exactly the same character online (full disclosure – I don’t actually play MMOs anymore because they’re too much of a time sink. But if I did, I’d absolutely pay for that kind of shortcut).
Also, your point about exploitation of their workforce is nonsense – the job of grinding character levels or farming resources is no more repetitive than that done by American auto workers or Chinese assembly line workers putting together iPods, and by definition it has to happen in air conditioned locations with electricity. Nobody loses a hand, or gets shot for not grinding fast enough, and in the third-world locations where this is done, what looks like a criminally small wage is actually a very respectable income.
As you yourself point out, Turbine and other companies have essentially recognized that there is a class of user with more money than time, as opposed to the opposite. Shouldn’t they get to play too?

Actually, that brings up an even larger issue. There seems to be a growing school of thought that rewards money over hard work. Less than reputable karate schools allow folks to “buy” black belt programs where they can acquire something that used to take years of hard work and training in a mere few months of practice and testing. Some colleges and universities allow the purchase of degrees in exchange for cash and “documented work experience.” And now we have gaming. Why put in the work for something when you can just go ahead and buy it. If that’s where gaming is headed…I’d rather not call myself a gamer.

Adams, that’s a load of bull errr… bull-nonsense.

1) Achievement in any field requires work one way or another.

2) These games hardly require any significant degree of work. Back when I played WoW I was quite good at it, and yet it didn’t come at a high cost. I still worked full time, went to school, had an active umm… personal life, participated in various social and physical activities, etc. At the same time I was a member of a raiding guild and often put out top DPS in raids. In short: grind is for people who don’t know how to play smart enough so that they end up playing hard instead.

Overall, allowing people to obtain in-game stuff via the means of out-of-game payments is not helping level the playing field. It helps ruin it. The field is leveled to begin with because everyone starts out the same and is presented with the same challenges, etc. If you are unhappy that someone has more time to play the game (or is simply good at it) and want to punish them for it then perhaps you would consider being punished for the things that you are good at or dedicate a lot of time to? Plus, why would you even want to play with “social rejects and unproductive members of society?” You have something to prove to them?

Michele is absolutely right: buying a high level character is no different then buying a college degree or a black belt. Yes, the person would brandish these powerful symbols, but when all is said and done they are still an uneducated fat ass.

1) True, but not all fields of endeavour are equal in value. Some reward us (and those around us) with tangible benefits that we can apply across broad sections of our lives, others with narrowly targeted benefits that only help in one area. Speaking economically, if the value of a game to a user is entertainment, or enjoyment, then the key to maximizing the value of the game is to have as much fun per hour as possible. Grinding isn’t fun (at least in the games I’ve played), so every hour spent grinding reduces the value of the game from the user’s perspective. In the working world, we tolerate tedious jobs because we are rewarded with broadly applicable benefits (money, status, health care) that apply to our life as a whole. Slogging through tedious content in a game so we can experience the fun we want provides a much more limited benefit, and detracts from the time we have to engage in more enjoyable pursuits inside or outside of the game world. I contend that doing boring stuff in games so we can do fun stuff later is bull hockey. So there.

2) Interesting. I played SWG back in the day, and grinding my way to master bioengineer took three weeks of 4-5 hour grinding sessions. That’s pretty significant time, in my opinion. I worked out once that had I spent that time billing hours to projects, I’d have earned something like 3.5k extra that year. I can’t back that math up anymore though, it’s been a while. If your contention is that people who grind don’t know how to play, I’d just suggest that you must not have been playing the same games I have. Trinketing in DAoC or producing 183,000 medical equipment parts in SWG are the only practical ways to achieve high levels in certain character classes and focus areas, and neither was very much fun. Certain character classes require grinding. I could choose to play another character class, but then that limits my enjoyment in a different way.

Your argument that allowing people to buy in-game progress using money ruins the game would seem to be predicated on two assumptions, both of which I believe to be erroneous. First, that there is a difference between money and time in the context of resource allocation. My core argument is that MMOs create an economy based primarily on expenditure of time. That provides a competitive advantage to people who have an excess of that resource, as opposed to a shortage of time and and excess (in the comparative sense) of money. This shouldn’t be surprising, since money is simply a crystallized measure of time previously devoted to productive goals (I work “h” hours at “w” wage, which is based on years of education or expereince “y” to achieve “c” monetary compensation).
Second, that people are “punished” by others achievement (whether gained in the game context or not). Fairness, or punishment typically consists of depriving someone of a resource to which they should normally be entitled without good reason (consider depriving a felon of their money though fines, their time through imprisonment, or in extreme cases, their life through execution). In a real world economy, unfair advantages occur because there are limited resources (money, food, space, etc). In game worlds, this in only true if the developer creates that situation artificially. That excessive gold farming and redistribution in an offline format could lead to inflation is certainly a problem, but that has more to do with the boneheaded economic policies of game designers. When the game is constantly creating and removing resources from the gameworld (spawning mobs that can be killed for loot, for instance, or charging a player for travel) it would be a trivial affair to simply adjust drops and money sinks up or down to keep the amount of gold in the economy equivalent. Then the problem becomes getting rich players to spend their money and other resources (we have the same problem in the real world right now, actually), but that will occur whether the money is earned “fairly” (by your definition) or not.
Your contention that I intend to punish anyone is unfounded. I don’t want to punish others, I just want to avoid punishing myself by spending hours doing something boring when I’d rather be doing something interesting. I’ve got a wife, two kids, a mortgage, and two jobs. I don’t have an excess of time to spend making leather dolls and effect regulators. Somebody wants to spend 100 hours doing that, more power to ‘em – they’re utilizing a resource they have in abundance. I don’t have a lot of time, but I’ve earned enough money outside of the game world to avoid it. I don’t see it as all that much different from microtransaction based “free to play” games, except that the game administrators have arbitrarily made that decision. Now if you want to make an argument that such behavior violates the EULA, then that’s another matter entirely, and it’s why I don’t actually buy resources or characters with real money – it’s against the rules. My point is simply that this is an artificial and arbitrary distinction, and substituting money for time is not unethical or unfair in principle.

Michele’s analogy to black belt “pay for test” dojos is apt in one sense – you do purchase a symbol of achievement without doing the work to achieve it. The critical distinction is that you only buy the *symbol* in that case – you haven’t actually achieved the benefits resulting from it. You might as well sew one yourself and print up a certificate on your computer. In an MMO, you can actually buy the abilities of a black belt. Her analogy would only work if we could download the knowledge of a master into your head for a specified cash payment. Think of Neo’s education in “The Matrix;” remember “I know kung-fu?” Does Morpheus insist that Neo spend twenty years learning the skills himself? No, he’s got better things to do with his time, so he takes an economic shortcut. Buying in-game currency, or a pre-leveled character, is no different.

Oh, and Michelle, although I didn’t make a point out of this in the last post (my apologies for the double post, by the way – I don’t see an edit button), your contrast between money and hard work is unfounded. Money, as I pointed out earlier, is a resource that is broadly equivalent to time. We constantly trade one for the other. I pay someone to mow my lawn, I’m trading the money I earned at my job for the time I don’t have to spend doing chores. The guy who mows my lawn is making the opposite trade my money for his time. The exchange rate isn’t always equal, but typically that’s also a result of this same idea. One exchanges time and money for an education, which typically allows you to spend less time later to earn more money, which is why an education is an investment, and not simply an exchange. My “exchange rate” for time versus money might be higher (or lower) than someone else’s because we have invested our time (or money) differently in the past. Is one of us behaving unethically? Should I mow my own lawn simply out of a sense of fairness? Would the hardworking guy who runs my neighborhood lawn service thank me for that?

@Adams,

First and foremost I do appreciate the civilized and well thought out answer. Just wanted to let you know.

Anyway, back to business. It is very true that we may have played different games. I never tried SWG, and wasn’t a serious player in DAoC, although I enjoyed that game. You may very well be right, and these games may have required more time investment, although I know that a lot of people complain of the grind in WoW and are perpetually poor despite playing for long stretches of time, while I find it very easy to make tons of money fast. Still, even if grind is present, such are the rules of that particular game.

Games are entertainment, as you pointed out, and exist purely for the purpose of allowing people to have fun. If a certain kind of game is not fun for someone, they should try to avoid it. If heavy metal is not your type of music, going to a metal concert is a bad idea. Yes, you could pay for a boombox, bring it with you and blast Justin Bieber from it, but don’t expect to make any friends that way. In fact why not go to his concert instead and save yourself and others much aggravation?

As to the black belt argument, any microcosm adheres to certain rules. In the gaming world there are things that are considered fair and not fair. General consensus is that one has to work for in-game rewards. This is why there is disdain for people who buy their way to the top. Most games are competitive in nature and being able to gain an edge via means that stand outside of the game’s mechanics will cheapen the achievements and efforts of others. It will also break the suspention disbelief, especially in RPGs.

I am not against the concept of a game where the person wins who has the most money in real life. But the games that we are talking about are not created with that philosophy in mind. When most of us sign up for an MMO, we expect our achievements to be a function of our efforts in-game, not out-of game.

Both you and I have lives that include other people, jobs, activities, etc. This is the choice we made, and frankly I believe it to be the right choice. However, this also means that we will always lose to a 17 year old basement virgin, who dropped out of high-school to play WoW. Personally I see nothing wrong with that.

This is an interesting (and civil) discussion. Let me chime in.

One thing I made sure to point out, and I will point out again, is that when third-party vendors, in violation of EULAs, offer these services, there are consequences that have nothing to do with fairness. There are security risks to both a single account and the game as a whole that are opened up by buying gold and leveling services. That does not mean that all gold-sellers are unethical scumbags who steal accounts and defraud people, but those kinds of con-artists do exist. Added to this is the problem of currency devaluation thanks to inflation (gold-sellers increase the in-game money supply, causing all currency to be valued less). Whether this is a good effect, a bad effect, or just an effect that economics professors are interested is an open question, but it is an effect. Added to this is the chat spam these third party vendors use to hawk there wares. It may not bother some people, but it really bothers me. I get enough badly written spam in my email; I don’t need it in-game, too. Yes, I do set these spammers to ignore, but LOTRO has a finite limit on the number of people allowed on an ignore list; my first month playing a few years ago saw me fill the list up in about a month with gold-spammers. That is ridiculous and unacceptable.

To me, these are important issues that have nothing to do with fairness, yet they still need addressing. Legalizing it, as Turbine has done, addresses these issues.

One thing that I think we all must acknowledge, however, is that having a top of the line character, and actually knowing how to use it, are two different things. Adam indicates that buying a leveled up character is like Neo learning kung-fu in the Matrix. There is one small problem: having access to all character abilities does nothing to teach you how to use them in the game. I can’t speak for WoW or SWG, but in LOTRO, running end-game content is not just about gear, it’s about knowing how to use your skills well. And you can’t “buy” that from a gold-seller. Yes, the person who bought their character will learn to use it eventually, but you end up wasting both your time and the time of others by not undergoing the “leveling up your character” apprenticeship. You end up with people playing champions who say things like (and I am not exaggerating about this next part) “I don’t know how to tank; I just punch skills and DPS.” (champions have tanking as an alternate role for their class) or hunters using heart-seeker at the beginning of the fight, taking all the aggro to themselves, because it is the skill that does the most damage.

Learning to properly employ a character’s skills are really only learned through use in a variety of situations, both solo and group. You do no one any favors by skipping early content and going straight to the endgame, because if you roll with me, I expect you to know that hunters can and should use fire oil to attack beasts and trolls, that lore-masters can root, stun, and mez multiple targets, and that guardians have the shield-wall skill to protect me (your healer) when we are swarmed with enemies. People who buy their way to the endgame may not know any of this useful information, but people who level up naturally will have learned all of these things before they get to the level cap.

Certainly I agree that there is a social stigma associated with purchasing resources in contravention of the rules of the game, but I don’t agree that all of the negative outcomes you identify are necessary consequences of that behavior. If we’re concerned about the suspension of disbelief, there are much bigger threats than newbs with overpowered characters. Take for instance OOC chat and the constant use of technical game jargon (DPS, Tank, mez, aggro, etc). Can you imagine Legolas turning to Gimli midway through “The Two Towers” and saying “Gimli, go spam [generic high damage skill] to draw aggro from that orc so I can set up my [generic high DOT skill]. Galdalf you mez those trolls while the halflings backstab and use their [generic stealther skill chain]. Everybody, remember to strafe and pop potions if your HP get low!”
That sort of exchange is one of the reasons I eventually went back to SP RPGs. In oblivion or FNV, nobody drops out of character or shows up with a name like “hollowpointkillaz89″ and says “lol” every ten seconds. Occasionally you can link up with a good group of RPersin an MMO, but even then you eventually get stuck in an area with a 12-year old who hasn’t learned the difference between telling and shouting who wants to talk about Justin Bieber.
I addressed the issue of inflation in an earlier post, but I’ll reiterate that illicit gold sales aren’t the problem – the inherent devaluation of the market by constantly creating and destroying currency is the issue. Good dev teams control for this, poor ones don’t, and then wail about hackers and gold sellers breaking the game.
Security is an issue as well, but one that could be solved by more intelligent behavior on the part of dev teams with regards to personal information collection. A basic rule for lawyers, doctors, and scientists is to never ask for information for which they aren’t prepared to be responsible. Utilizing third parties like paypal, who are set up for secure exchanges to handle fees and subscriptions is a much smarter way to go. Games aren’t set up for security, because that’s not their focus, and it isn’t where the talent of their employees lies. Blaming security risks on 3rd parties is disengenuous at best, and an abdication of responsibility at worst.

I agree with Jason on an important point, though – there is definitely a difference between people who are have gone through the experience of levelling up and those who haven’t in terms of how effectively they use a given character build. that being said, one could spend 2-3 hours browsing on the average character forum and get a pretty good notion of what they should be doing and pick up the rest as they go. Playing an MMO character in PvE or PvP isn’t rocket science – there are a couple of basic strategies that pretty much everyone uses, and then it comes down to who’s got the best build, gear, and targeting priorities. Harkening back to the Matrix analogy, as you pointed out, while Neo gets all of the skills of the masters of a dozen martial arts, he still has to learn to use them. I’d point out that he then goes on to do so in a matter of minutes, as opposed to years or decades. Yes, you could accumulate the skills and strategies of a seasoned MMORPG player over months of painstaking play, or you could buy a character, read a couple of player-written class guides, spend and hour or two on the forums, and then be a pretty good facsimile of a “real” player.
In truth, I don’t know that we’re that far apart, opinion-wise. I think most of us would agree that microtransactions represent a valid alternative to the shadow economy, and actually reward the IP holders in the process. The logic is the same as that which ended prohibition. People are going to consume alcohol, even if you ban it. Might as well regulate, tax, and standardize that consumption to offset the societal cost of drunkenness while protecting people (and society) from the consequences of their own actions. It’s analogous to buying booze from a moonshiner or the local ABC – the second one gives you a receipt and charges you sales tax, but both products get you equally hammered. Although there may be paint thinner in the moonshine.

P.S.: Alaric, a noteworthy example of a game where the person with the most money wins might be an auction. I know people who play them as a competitive sport. It’s just as stupid as it sounds (especially since they’re often “competing” with people who actually *want* the item in question), but ultimately I don’t think it’s any stupider than competing to be the first player on a server to level 40, or to win the +5 sword of envy-induction, or unlock the jedi character slot by sheer application of man-hours.

I will point out that Adams is quite right about role-playing immersion. One of the only times that LOTRO’s Brandywine server makes me ashamed is when trolls heckle RPers in the designated RP chat channel. It baffles me that an otherwise friendly community will needlessly troll people who are having a good time (and who are paying the same fees to have that good time, too!). It even doubly confuses me, since the game is designed with a damn good story and some really nice immersive elements (leet speak in chat channels notwithstanding).

But beyond that, MMOs don’t seem to be about real role-playing anyway. I may be missing some MMOs, but the mere ease with which MMO jargon can be transferred between them signifies to me that most MMOs are first and foremost role-playing GAMES, as opposed to ROLE-PLAYING games. The emphasis is heavily weighted in favor of performing game tasks well, as opposed to enjoying a story or plausibly acting out a character’s actions. This isn’t a bad thing, but it highlights why I haven’t thrown all my single-player games in the trash. The experiences are really different. And to the nay-sayers, I will say that there are some very good role-playing games that are all about story and characters. Planescape: Torment is perhaps the best known (and one of my absolute favorites), but there are others.

Indeed, I think Ps:T is among the best traditional (i.e. non-sandbox) CRPGs ever made. I can really only think of the BG series as being in the same league, and they’re quite different in scope. The world was amazing, but I still think the quality of the characters was what made it great. I can still remember Dakkon, Annah, and Grace with perfect clarity, whereas it takes a lot of effort to remember even the companions from Dragon Age or the core characters from FO3 or Oblivion if I haven’t played them in a while.

The thing about LOTRO is that you can pay for VIP for a few months, get a max level, and then DROP down to premium and you wouldn’t lose much of anything. So it’s much more of a pay as you go kind of thing.

For example, you could spend some 1-2 dollars on TP to buy unlocks for your crafting line so that it can go to Supreme Mastery. But if you go to VIP, you can get it for the package price, level up, and then drop down and you won’t have to pay anything afterwards.

Thus you can grind and save money at the same time, or spend money and grind. There’s no end to it even. What with every faction rep rank and deed giving you TP points, you may even end up farming and grinding for TP points because you don’t want to pay for TP.

People remember Dakkon, ANnah, and Grace because these were characters with unique backstories that impacted the plot, as well as unique powers that determined their combat potential. It was done in a way that wasn’t just a trash mod, but consistent with the lore and the theme.

They mattered because they were needed for you to finish the game. You couldn’t just kick them out and kill them, and be on your merry way, like you could with Baldur’s Gate or other NWN or Dragon Age.

It’s one thing for 3/4 of your party members to turn on you and attack you. It’s quite another thing when the only people you can get to join your party… is in your party. Then it matters.

The way to make gamers care is to hit them where it hurts: their combat, stats, economy, equipment, inventory, plot progress, etc.

A story development that gives your character a permanent increase to a stat. Great right? Except there were conversation options that would only be unlocked at a certain stat, and spell buffs wouldn’t count. NWN1/2 tried to do the same, but it just didn’t fit. It didn’t really matter.