Hey, wouldn't that solve any future bandwith/financing issues that Q23 might ever have? We can all become Everquest mercenaries. Woo-hoo!

Cock-a-doodle profit.

Of course by "we" I mean people who can actually play the games, not necessarily me.

Amanpour

I was going to post a message how I couldn't understand anyone paying for game items, but as I was typing it up I convinced myself otherwise. Last night on b.net I saw someone offering stone of jordan rings for sale, payment to be made through PayPal. My initial reaction was, "That's stupid." I may have been a bit hasty.

If you want a better experience from your hobby, why shouldn't you be able to buy better items? I don't hear people complaining when a golfer buys the latest club or golf shoes. That's an investment in fun.

So, best wishes to those who want to spend money on EQ accounts or D2 items, I hope you get your money's worth.

-DavidCPA

Perhaps. But good golf clubs only go so far in improving your game--Tiger Woods with a set of K-Mart specials will still whip Biff "my daddy bought me the best clubs in the world" if Biff is a duffer. But in games, having better armor or weapons or whatever is usually all that distinguishes a player. Imagine a Counter-Strike match where you could use your real money to start every game with full armor and the best weapon, for instance.

I don't begrudge individuals for buying stuff for their gaming--hell, it's their money--but I do begrudge game companies for supporting it and allowing it, or at least for not doing much about it. Why? Because I resent games where being rich in RL translates into having a much better experience. In polo it's ok, because poor folks can't even play at all, but in a game that is mass market, where the only bar to entry is a $40 game box or a $10/month fee, allowing people with more disposable income to dominate simply because they have more money is not terribly attractive (and in the long run IMO will kill off your subscriber base).

Diablo II doesn't matter much because you play in small groups, but in EQ and other MMOGs it's problematic--a few people buying thier way to uber-status unbalances things and, if you have PvP going heavy, can really screw things up.

Of course, do I play online much? Nope. But I felt the same way about Magic cards, too--ultimately, that game became a struggle to see who could spend more money on cards rather than a test of skill.

Just my personal feelings. There are games in the works, like Project Entropia, that are based entirely on getting you to spend RL money in game. I will avoid them like the plague.

What about solo games? What if you could, say, start Baldur's Gate II with a 12th level party for an extra $10 (leaving aside the fact that with a free trainer you can do just that)? I think I'd object to companies offering that sort of option, too, because it would necessarily mean that they'd develop one game and force it to serve low and high paying customers alike--and we know who gets the shaft there.

It's not really a problem with Diablo 2 since each game world is created anew for each game session.

In EQ and other games with a persistent world you get item farmers, though, who can be a pain for people who just want to play the game.

I don't really have a problem with people power-leveling and then selling the characters. If someone wants a shortcut to a high level character, so be it. I can sympathize with the players who advanced legitimately, but I don't see that it's a huge problem. Of course Verant outlaws the selling of accounts, so if you buy one and they somehow find out, they'll cancel it and you're out the money.

Item arbitage just reveals the central point of MMORPGs. The power level of your character is entirely determined by the time you put into the game; the only reason most people play the game is to up the power level of their character; therefore, you're paying someone else to waste 100 hours for you, so you can then strut around town with your high-powered eq.

It makes perfect sense from an economic standpoint, but it also means EQ meets the definition of a job. Why should I want to play this again?

I do a lot of selling on http://www.playerauctions.com, I currently make about a $1000 a week selling Everquest related stuff and I can't wait for the release of Dark Age of Camelot, I need another cash cow :P

And to those who think that this promotes farming, you are dead wrong. The big sellers do not farm, hell I don't even play Everquest, I just sell Everquest related stuff :p

Robert,

I see many of your points but what about the people supplying the items/accounts? Is there an economic barrier to those people building uber-accounts or finding high level items? Not really. It's all a matter of how much time they put into the game. I play D2 fairly often with some 16 year old kid in Indiana. He pulled an all-nighter on Friday. Can I do that? Not anymore. Real life responsibilites and the onset of old fartism get in the way. Does he have better items? You bet.

Shouldn't people who invest the time be allowed to gain from their efforts? I think so. I don't play EQ so I can't respond to the unbalancing or PvP issues, but does it really matter how the person got to a higher level? The high level character is there whether it was bought or not.

-DavidCPA

Depends on what you imagine a game to be, I guess, David. On the one hand people who sell their stuff (i.e., tangible forms of their time) aren't doing anything wrong I suppose, but on the other hand, the user agreements they sign generally ban them from such activities, in that they are reselling items that are in the end the property of the owner of the game being played. EQ stuff and characters are ultimately the property of SOE, not you--you own the account, but at any time they can terminate your account, stop charging you, and wipe your characters if they feel like it.

On a broader level, I object to moving real-world pressures and dynamics into games in these ways. I play games to escape the real world, not to replicate it. In the real world I have to deal with not having the money to buy the stuff I want. I have to deal with people getting preferential treatment because they are wealthier. In a game, I want to have my own actions in-game determine my fate. I don't mind seeing ubercharacters parading by, if those folks put the time in. Seeing people come in and lord it over me because, once again, they have more money is not something I'm interested in experiencing.

I'm not going to lose sleep about it, but it's another reason I don't play these sorts of games anymore.

I guess I have expectations about my gaming experience too. I would prefer that player killers not bushwhack me with no warning when I am playing D2. Dueling is fine, but working cooperatively to kill unsuspecting players is not my idea of fun. People who do that cannot be nice people in real life.

I don't lose much sleep over it, but I can say that I am working on an anti-PK character that I can use to teach someone like that a lesson - a fast, high resist, high damage barbarian codenamed "Stopf******withme".

-DavidCPA

I like that idea!

'Shouldn't people who invest the time be allowed to gain from their efforts?'

There you go: proof EQ isn't really a game.

(Disclosure: I despise the eBay-MMOG connection, but I did sell my old AC account there on the one condition it would be stripped for parts rather than played. Turns out the guy that bought it distributed the money and tradeables to his allegiance, then traded all the armor and weps for more tradeables. Nice.)

DavidCPA:

"If you want a better experience from your hobby, why shouldn't you be able to buy better items? I don't hear people complaining when a golfer buys the latest club or golf shoes. That's an investment in fun."

Buying new clubs or shoes doesn't make you a more effective golfer, but buying better gear in an MMOG does. And in a game where the last, biggest hit counts, you're buying an advantage that you didn't earn. And since the only real "currency" in MMOGs is time invested, it's remarkably similar in form to using god mode in a single player game.

Because one of the rationalizations for RL cash in MMOGs is "But why shouldn't people use whatever resources they have at their disposal to have more fun?" Because it's outside the scope of the game. Those that use this argument are often in the camp of, "Whatever it takes to WIN BABY!"

It's not against the rules to kick over the chessboard when you're losing. Why don't you?

To put it another way, let's say you went out for your regular foursome on the weekends, but you made more money than your buddies. Okay. So you buy a new club, and this new club knocks 12 points off your handicap. Your new shoes knock off another 6. Is the game going to be fun any more? Think your buddies'll keep inviting you out? "Hey, guys, I bought a new piece of gear! We on for Sunday?" "*click*"

Or you buy a new mouse for Counterstrike that lets you do 20-50% more damage, or run 25% faster, or gives you 50% more money between rounds. Is that cheating? No, because you're only using your monetary advantage to have more fun, right?

Robert Mayer:

"Because I resent games where being rich in RL translates into having a much better experience."

Better is subjective. I have a better time than any person that's bought gear for RL cash, I guarantee you. Why? Because I'm playing the game by the rules--and I know it. And he's not playing the game by the rules--and he knows it. And I'll be very hard to convince that that knowledge doesn't eventually make them stop and think, "Well, this was fun, but how much did I miss by doing it this way?" (Of course, if they're so shallow and short-sighted that they never consider this... well. Not much I can do.)

Mark Asher:

"I don't really have a problem with people power-leveling and then selling the characters. If someone wants a shortcut to a high level character, so be it."

I take it you've never grouped with an eBay'd post-50 Warrior that doesn't know how to keep Taunt. Or a post-50 Necro that doesn't know how to twitch. Or, or, or. Especially in EQ, where Knowing Your Role In The Group is critical, and other people depend on you knowing your skillset to stay alive.

DavidCPA again:

"...does it really matter how the person got to a higher level?"

In group oriented games, absolutely. And since every MMOG to date has been group oriented--to a greater or lesser degree--the answer to that would be an unqualified "yes".

Okay. That got too long. Enough out of me.

The problem with EQ is that once you've done the level treadmill, you don't really want to do it again just to play a new race/class combo. I can forgive someone who gets his guild to power level him.

If someone buys a high level character and doesn't know how to play it, well, that player will soon be soloing, I'm sure.

$1000/week for selling EverQuest items?

I file this under "MMORPG games are freakish, and so are many of the people who play them."

---

Quote:

If someone buys a high level character and doesn't know how to play it, well, that player will soon be soloing, I'm sure.

---

$1000 a week isn't really that much, there are several sellers who make well over five grand a month selling everquest related stuff and the number one seller on player auctions makes $3500 a day!

Don't believe me, check out his auctions here:

http://www.playerauctions.com/search/search_results.cfm?search_type=seller_search&search_text=990142030&search_name=Search+by+Seller&auction_mode=0

"the number one seller on player auctions makes $3500 a day!

Don't believe me, check out his auctions here: "

I didn't believe you, so I checked, and I still don't believe you. The seller you linked has 3 items listed that close before 10/28, none with a single bid on them. His high starting prices suggest he doesn't expect a lot of competing bidders.

You sound like gamblers or day traders (redundant, I know). Perhaps you once had a week with $1000 in closed auctions, but it's hard to believe that's an average or common scenario. Plus, it sounds like you're just a middle man, so you actually paid something for those items yourself - so it's not like a $52000 annual income.

It looks like on 10/2, Yantis closed about $100 worth of auctions with 'EQ' in the item name, his big item almost $50. Before 10/28, he's got 3 more items listed, then ANOTHER 820! Looks like maybe he's collected a lot of items that have gone without bids before and he doesn't want the hassle of constant relisting. And he's paid good money for the items, so he's certainly going to keep trying to get his money back.

Am I missing some non-EQ stuff that makes these claims appear less delusionary?

I've always had either time or money, never both. If I have time & no money, I wash my own car, I clean my own place, and I make my own food. If I have money and no time, I go to the car wash, I hire a maid, and I eat out. It sounds like a version of this is going on in the online games. To get to a certain point, you can either put in your own time and labor, or buy the equivalent product from someone else. For both types of player, it is probably impossible to play in the other fashion.

DavidCPA:
"Isn't EQ an extremely large persistant world where you should be able to get away from a player you don't like?"

Yes, it is. What I'm trying to point out--somewhat unsuccessfully, it would appear--is that you don't know if the player's inexperienced or not. At least, until you die.

And in EQ, above level 50, dying generally means, "Whoops, there goes 30-40 hours of play time out the window. Gosh, I wish that guy hadn't bought that character on eBay."

But yes, you can avoid them. To a degree. In EQ, you can't solo above, oh, 40ish, I'd say, unless you're doing a monk and you have a lot of time on your hands--the downtime sans group in EQ is brutal. So you have to group to get anything done, and unless you've got a lot of friends online that you group with, you're going to be getting a lot of pickup groups.

And anyone you don't know has the potential to get you killed and waste a huge chunk of your time.

Talk about gambling. :)

Yeah, that's why the guild scene in EQ is so strong. Like it or not, Verant succeeded in making the game very social. At the high levels you have to play with other players. The result is that guilds are really a big deal.

I don't like this aspect of the game. However, it's hard to say if they were wrong in designing it this way. It's arguable that, forced by the game design to play together, players form bonds and enjoy the game more.

Anonymous:
"$1000 a week isn't really that much, there are several sellers who make well over five grand a month selling everquest related stuff and the number one seller on player auctions makes $3500 a day!"

Wow. 3.5k a day? That's only a million dollars a year!

Nice link above. Zero bids on four pages of items (got bored and didn't look at any more). For the hell of it, went through the user feedback and picked three things at random off every page for five pages. Didn't find a single thing over 15 bucks.

3500 bucks a day? At 15 bucks a pop? So... he's selling, uh, 250 things a day? Wow. Talk about carpal tunnel typing all that in. Cute, though. I don't know what's more pathetic--bragging that you want to make a living off this, or lying about it.

By the way, it sure does look like a vibrant economic model.

17 bids on 50 items. Man. Think I'll keep the day job.

Umm, if you look at his auctions they are all "Buy Now" auctions, so they dont have bids! If a user bids on any of his auctions they are using the buy now and the auction goes off the site, it was sold then and there. Not all of his auctions are done on Player Auctions, he also has his own site with over 3000 current auctions running.

$3500 a day is a average. Somedays he will only do $100, some days he will clear $5000, it all averages out to $3500 a day.

It really isn't that hard, I only sell part time and I make roughly 1k a week, I have made up to $2500 in one day before, when I had a fresh account and just posted new auctions (always the best day for money). Anyhow I am a small seller compared to others, you can doubt the money all you want but it is true.

A few of us sellers keep in contact (our own private board) to watch out for scammers and bad buyers. We all have to claim this income on our taxes and we had some help from a cpa that we all went together on. Anyhow, one of the more serious sellers just had a baby and bought a new house, it was all funded from sells on Player Auctions. I just bought a new (used but new) car and and my sells have paid for both my car, my rent and my education for the last year.

Wow!! He bought a baby with money he made from player auctions!!

Man, e-bay is amazing these days. I had no idea you could buy a child.

Hey Anon, I'd be interested in doing a story on the money changing hands in all of this. Could the CPA perhaps furnish me with information with the names blacked out or something? It's not that I doubt you, but I need something more than message board posts to go on.

Email me at [email protected] or [email protected] in case my stupid spam-blocking ISP doesn't let you through.

I would like to relate an experience I had tonight where someone got carried away in policing what they thought was inappropriate behavior.

I was playing on battle.net using a low 50s level assassin. I jumped into an 8 player bloody hills run to gain experience. I use the first waypoint and begin my way back to town. I make it to Shenk's area (first Act 5 boss) and see he is killed. My daughter calls to me from the potty needing some help. Do I take the time to portal to town before checking on my daughter? No, I look down for a sec and see no monsters around me and go check on her. I come back in a minute and find that one player has gone hostile with me and is just finishing me off. He says that he is finishing off a "leecher". A leecher on b.net is someone who joins a large party to gain experience without actually killing any monsters or helping the other players - not very popular on b.net.

I am thinking to myself WTF! I protest very loudly about what he had done explaining why I was away from the keyboard. It didn't seem strange to them that I would stand still and let a p**** necro kill me without running or fighting back. My explanation of checking on my daughter on the potty also didn't ring true with most of the players though how many people would come up with that excuse on the spur of the moment?

To top it off, when I retrieved my body I was missing my socketed high damage claw and socketed unique shield - very expensive items. I thought I had dropped them because I accidentally picked up an extra item when retrieving my body - or so I thought. I kept asking people if they had my stuff to no avail. Finally someone went back to where I died and saw my body was still there. Got the claws and sheild no problem - weird deal all around.

The moral to this long post is that be careful when taking it upon yourself to police your favorite game because you may unwittingly punish the innocent.

-DavidCPA

"$3500 a day is a average. Somedays he will only do $100, some days he will clear $5000, it all averages out to $3500 a day."

Thanks for pointing out the 'buy now' stuff. But it still doesn't add up. For Yantis:
10/2 about $100
10/1 about $200
9/30 about $100
9/29 well under $100
9/28 about $50
9/27 about $50
9/26 $0
9/25 $0
9/24 $0

Maybe he just started using his graphic on 9/27. I just listed all 'inactive' items by descending end date and looked for that. $3500 may have been the total for all auctions on some of those days, but I bet I didn't see a $5000 grand total day in there.

There must be a hell of a spike in activity beyond what I saw to get the average back up to $3500. Or perhaps that figure is a bit 'fuzzy'.

That this one guy is responsible for arbitage on $1,000,000 in EQ equipment per year is the biggest problem with the $3500 "average." That's $5 per EQ user.

You are only looking at Player Auctions, he also has his own site where he lists items for sale, he has said he does the majority of his sales from his own site and only about 30% of his sales come from Player Auctions.

So, he's doing $1,000,000 a year in volume. Right?

If the PA numbers I saw are 30%, the total for 9/27-10/2 would be $2000. $3500 per day would be $21,000 - more than an order of magnitude off. I know these are rough numbers against 2nd or 3rd hand claims, but the discrepancies and plain old bs detector suggest there are serious exaggerations involved.

I poked around www.mysupersales.com - there were 3 account packages listed (at around $400 each) and only 1 of 3 servers I checked had many items (Fennin Ro). The items ranged from $.03 to about $50.

What about you, Anonymous? You claimed $1000 a week earlier. Is that your *profit*, or gross revenue? Do you sell via any public auction site where we could verify this 'recent' activity of yours? While you've obviously found a handful of skeptics here, it certainly couldn't hurt to direct some of the very game oriented readers here to your items currently for sale.

$1000 a week is my gross, not profit.

I wont use my name because I have already had over 10 accounts banned and don't wish to lose anymore, every account I lose is a lot of money wasted.

I'm not here to prove who makes how much, I was only commenting on how much some people and myself make, take it or leave it. To be honest I shouldn't even talk about it because if one more person becomes a major seller that is one more person I have to compete against.

None of the people here are interested in becoming EQ equipment sellers. They may be interested in writing about it though. And now that they are "alerted" to it, they are going to continue investigating, with or without your help.

I, too, find it hard to believe that one guy is touching a million dollars a year selling EQ stuff.

This is a true account of what was offered to me about 6 months ago in EQ.

A newbie cleric was running around auctioning that he was looking to buy some cleric gear. I was in the middle of stripping out the extra items from my bank so I send him a list of items that I was selling off (Dark Ember, Crystal Covered Shroud, 2 golem tear rings, 2 forest loops, velium ruby veil, and a pile of filler cleric items that I had stashed in the bank after 2 years of play). He asks how much and I say "For which item?" and he replies "All of them... I just bought 10k plat from PA so I can buy plenty". I told him to look up the prices on EQPrices and get back to me on an offer for certain items since he couldn't afford the whole thing.

2 hours later I get another tell from him saying "$1,500 for all of it". Ummm, I told him that 1,500 plat wasn't nearly enough for anything except the filler items or maybe the robe alone. He clarified that he was willing to give me $1500 in U.S. cash through paypal that very second on his other PC and that I could just wait for the transaction to clear before making the trade.

I promptly /report'ed him, filed a petition and said I didn't have a paypal account (which I don't).

This was my junk stuff. Items I could probably replace in a week (except for the rings. Those would take some major trades to get those replaced), and here he was offering me more than my 2 week take-home pay from work. I was tempted, but I honestly can't stand people who E-Bay their stuff, so I declined. Still, it makes me wonder what I could get selling my cleric with his everyday play equipment.

Oh, and about DAoC... buying and selling things there will be fairly useless unless they revamp their item system. Short of characters, there isn't an item in the game that would take more than 30 minutes to pick up from what I've seen from the beta folks. You could probably get some customers buying characters, but the equipment doesn't appear to be cash-worthy IMHO. THere are always artifacts, but those aren't tradable and there will only be about a dozen per server, watched very closely by Mythic (these are things like Excaliber, Merlin's Wand, etc), so I don't see the characters with these items being able to be transfered to other credit cards and billing addresses without someone noticing.

'2 hours later I get another tell from him saying "$1,500 for all of it".'

This specific story smells like burgeoning credit card fraud. Good thing you reported him.

Jim Frazer

You are really off about DAOC, believe me. Check PA in about one month. There are several items that will be sold, already making lists and of course currency is going to be a big hit :)

I can see currency being huge, especially since Mythic has publicly said that the economy is going to be purposfully tight.

The game isn't out yet, so I'm working from second hand beta knowledge about the availability of decent items. From what I was told, most items that are plaer made will be better than those that you can get from merchants or critter drops. I spose I can see a group of master craftsmen getting together and accepting RL cash for their wares instead of in game money.

Either way, it's not for me. As much as I would love to get paid to play my games, I can't bring myself to charge someone money for virtual bits of data. I don't begrudge those who choose to buy/sell items though.

I do not understand the problem. With AO my Gunnar sells his FAs pistols each for 5000 cr! This was before they softened them. That is 10,000 in minutes. I imagine EQ would be the same. Why is 3500 in a day difficult because it is less? If you have good things and people want to buy them. It does not hurt anyone. The money I mean.

Greetz!

Uh.. Johan.. We're talking about US dollars. Greenbacks. Bucks. Not EQ money. Real money, that you could buy real things like cars and food and a place to live with.

You are mixing up AO and EQ with UO and EQ I am certain. I don't play them but AO but there are no places to live in EQ and only AO has cars. EQ and AO are past fantasy! Gunnar had an apartment with five furniture decorations. I am missing him quite sooner than ever expected.

Greetz!

My brother has explained that oh you mean like a job. Ignore me please.

Greetz!

I still don't think you get it, but it'll take a better than me to break down this language barrier.

The problem is, real live people are going to work and taking their salary -- we're not in a game yet -- and then spending that money, in real life, to buy items in the game.

Example: On e-bay, someone sells a valued sword in UO (or EQ, or whatever) for $1500, American, US dollars. They pay the person who owns the UO account $1500 US dollars, and then they meet in the game, and the character who found the sword gives it to the character whose real-life "counterpart" spent real-live money on.

Therefore, the problem is that people who have the most money in real life, not the people who work the hardest in the game, are winding up with all the game's best items, and they haven't earned them.

Was that clearer?

"I still don't think you get it, but it'll take a better than me to break down this language barrier."

I think I get it better, how could it be? I think making money (the "gap"!) to play games is very good. I wish I could sell my Max Payne games, or perhaps just the guns that he holds in both hands! Then I could still use the shotgun very well and effectively. Ha's!

Greetz..

$1,500 for a game item! I thought $6 for an Stone of Jordan ring in D2 was ridiculous. Geez!

-DavidCPA

Hehe, well, it was a rather large number of items, but honestly I think I could have replaced them all in about 15 hours of gameplay. So figure that is $100 an hour to harvest items for resale.

It's no wonder EBay was such a huge business for some of these folks.