RMT Article on CNN.com.Follow

Oh dear god...

I hope this senario (sp?) doesn't happen:

S-E sells gil for lower price than IGE and other compedators.
Compedators lower price below S-E.
S-E lowers price below IGE.
IGE lowers price below S-E.

That would mean overall giving more gil to the gilbuyers and thus PROBABLY raising AH prices for the rest of us. Although one could argue that without RMT the prices of things would fall since RMT hike prices for better profit. I don't know, its all sketchy to me. I guess its better to get rid of gilsellers and make the gil out of thin air than have the gilsellers ***** over everyone else by monopolizing. But then if S-E sells gil themselves....does that change anything about the legal standing of gil as currency?

you guys are reading it wrong if you think Sony is selling new currency.... Sony is facilitating player-to-player sales. I.E. they eliminate the need for an IGE-like company. this would NOT lead to hyperinflation as someone said, any more so than RMT in FFXI already does.

companies like sony and SE need to find some way to properly protect in-game money/items legally, enabling them to remove the "gray area" and prosecute RMT's.

If the future of MMORPGs is buying items and money for RL money, then i dont want any part of it.

I said it before but SE or Sony selling their own currency will be the best thing imaginable to the game. Why would a company put up with people who are in direct competition with them on their own game. Every bot, gil seller, etc. would be kicked post haste. Also, they would most likely keep it to designated servers so not to alienate the players who do not want to be in a game that allows this. I say they should go for it, I see only positive things.

lol i hope this was a joke....

Everquest used to be the biggest mmorpg on the market. There are far more gamers who want to play a game without RMT than with RMT. Does anyone seriously think business models that would allow baseball teams to buy runs with cash would ever succeed? Do the majority of people walk in to game stores and ask for a used finished version of the game?

This whole issue is hyper-bubble-hyped at the moment. Every University, every newspaper, every magazine, wants to appear "in" and "hip" to the "e-scene". Yeah, one or a few persons might be able to squeek out 100K+ RL salaries but supply and demand will bring that crashing back hard when there are more people who try to compete against them, including the game companies like Sony.

In the end mmorpgs compete extremely hard against one another. The market will evolve to satisfy the demands of what consumers want. That's why WoW is making the big money and EQII is not. The in game economies don't lie. The effect of RMT, which by definition, causes inflation (gil + dollars for items > just gil for items), is directly translated into in game prices. An inflationary economy translated to longer times to accumulate in game things. The end effect can be similar to say doubling traveling distances if prices double. Of course some things inflate up equal percentages also, but not everything. A twice as hard game might not sell as well in the market as an easier game (WoW vs. EQII). So let Sony take it's risk that RMT will work in the marketplace. My money says they are losing a lot of potential and future revenue by endorsing RMT. If all Gods and Dynamis were 24/7 camp monopolized by gil seller teams, there is no doubt SE would take a hit to its monthly subscription bottom line as end gamers left. So in the end the free market will give us the games we want. The future will not be RMT, except in niche areas, and nor will the future be standing around doing nothing for hours waiting for things to spawn. The games have always been getting better. The RMT assault is certainly a fly in the ointment, but smart companies will successfully deal with it to maximize their revenues.

It just comes down to a business of cheating. Boxing used to bring in huge dollars to bookies who could fix fights. Eventually the sport became so tainted and infested with a cheating reputation that the net result is the common people don't care or follow the sport to anywhere near the degree they used to. That translates into billions in potential revenue the industry threw away by not operating a business with integrity. Sony is like Don King, a sleezeball. Their mmorpg products will be worth less to consumers in the long run than others who do not endorse RMT and attempt to keep it at bay. Most mmorpg'ers are looking for ROLE-PLAYING-GAMES not first person shooter competitions over claiming spawns or bidding more dollars than the next guy. One of the first rules of business is know your customer, know your market.

Being an intellectual property attorney myself, Salyer's claim as to "s[itting] with the best legal minds in the U.S." is highly dubious. Either gross, gross exaggeration or just a flat-out lie. I don't think IGE or players are within their rights BUT I don't think SE or other MMO producers are going to fight RMT either. Just a simple cost-benefit analysis is all Sony really did. They figured out it was a lost more beneficial to get 10% of EACH trade than to fight out some long hard battle in court only to have companies like IGE selling ANYWAYS even if they won.

Precisely. In fact, quite possibly an economic loss.

The ONLY way this is possible to impliment into FFXI.. is if they controlled the AH with a buffer to make it so a Scrop Harness did not end up 240mil..

Short of that, not possible.

The only gil buyers I look at with disgust are the ones who use that gil on all of the most useless +1's and the like. People who just want to be an "FFXI Celebrity" or whatever by appearing rich and clever when they're actually some of the stupidest, talentless players the server has to offer. Those are the pathetic individuals who are destroying the game.

What I find amusing in this topic is how a couple people keep saying "If this keeps up, FFXI's economy will be destroyed!". I don't know what candy land server some of you play on, but on quite a few servers the economy has already been destroyed; almost impossible to buy anything of relatively good value or performance due to incomprehensible inflation.

Of course, then all the players who have no static to do BCNM's with, no reliable group of people that can help them out with anything in the game, but still have a lot of skill and desire to be at the peak of their performance...have to adapt to make it possible to keep up that same pace.

So, they try to camp good NM's so they can get themselves out of a financial rut. When they get to Castle Oztroja/Giddeus/Boyahda Tree/Sanctuary of Zi'Tah/Any remote place that has good money in it, they're greeted by group upon coordinated group of gil sellers, all unresponsive, all rude, all with blatantly obvious names. Even though the person would try to camp against this group, the sheer amount of manpower and illegal game tools the gil sellers use makes it so that even when the mob pops right in front of the player...it's popped purple.

So, what do you do? Farm Pashhow Marshlands for weeks on end to make a couple million or so gil, unable to have fun doing anything else in the game while your friends get ahead of you?

I feel that most people who buy gil do it just so they can keep up with the worsening economy's prices. However, since this seems to be huge amounts of the population nowadays, the economy has become practically unbearable for the non-static, non-bcnm, non gil-buying player. Some servers have things that were 300k last year be over 2 million this year. Even the "Cheap" servers are abysmal. I'm glad I got my Haub before it shot up to 4.5 mil from 2.2 mil. What's next, Scorpion Harness will go from 6 mil to 10 mil in the span of not-even-a-week? I sure as hell hope not, especially with the Ninja fad on our server -- but that's an entirely different topic.

I don't think Sony should embrace gil buying or gil selling. All it does is make more money accessible. It'd be like if the American government just decided to push more money into the system every time there were financial crises, and that can of course create inflation! It wouldn't matter how cheap and affordable it was, all that'd do is make it so 100 million no longer meant anything, and we'd all be multi millionaires spending 200k on sole sushi stacks. Our money threshold goes up, and the mass of people wouldn't care anymore because gil itself is so affordable now, right?

Of course, FFXI actually has no part of all this, since its an independently owned MMORPG of SE rather than a Sony-owned game. The key to fixing FFXI's economy is to make new and interesting gameplay additions that could provide ways of getting these coveted items without a group's help, and without a way to have gil sellers "camp". Camping in my opinion has outlived its fun and usefulness, since so many bastards have tarnished the fun of it now.

The reason for all that easy accessibility is even though FFXI is supposed to be a social game...you'd find that large amounts of its population are rather arrogant, ignorant, and anti-social (Not to say there aren't lots of good people, there's just a very large and noticable ratio).

True, you might ask "Why bother making all of these items so that everyone can get them? It'd ruin the fun of the game!" Well, consider this: What's fun about a game where the economy has become bloated to such a point that gil buying has almost become a necessity for the average player? I would absolutely despise paying all this money just so I can keep playing the game, and the money isn't even going to the developers!

I've thought of lots of neat ideas that would take a major blow to gil selling, yet add lots of good gameplay additions. I'm sure we've all had different ideas that could be put forth which would fix FFXI's economy yet present new and interesting gameplay functions. Just a shame SE never does things like ask the players what ideas they have for things like stopping item monopolization. All they seem to ultimately concern themselves with is easier problems to solve...like MPK. Why bother trying to stop MPK when you should be looking at what the root of the problem is? The majority of MPK is caused by greed, straight and simple. Make it so there's easily accessible ways to get these items and introduce interesting content at the same time, and while you won't get rid of all problems, it will make it so the economy would no longer be in the pot (don't try to kid yourself; it's down there). Rate me down as you see fit, but this is all what I think and for some unfathomable reason decided to get it off my mind.

Seconded.