[MUD-Dev] banning the sale of items

[Raph Koster]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: mud-dev-admin at kanga.nu [mailto:mud-dev-admin at kanga.nu]On Behalf Of
> Geoffrey A. MacDougall
> Sent: Tuesday, April 11, 2000 11:31 PM
> To: 'mud-dev at kanga.nu'
> Subject: RE: [MUD-Dev] banning the sale of items
>
> From what I know of you MUD, Matt, you are operating at a scale
> where it is
> financially feasible for you to investigate and patch any errors that may
> have resulted in players losing virtual goods for which they paid RL
> currency.  I would hesitate to assume that the same model would be
> functionable at a larger scale.

Well, if it isn't now, it probably will be at some point, It's a braindead
obvious business move that has been proven to work at smaller scales. Sega
was going to try it in a big way with LEDOs a while back, and others have
taken whacks at it. The profits that eBay makes from these sales is enticing
enough to any game developer... :)

> I think that Raph has the best take on the matter - don't condone or
rebut,
> but simply take it as a compliment that your creation has such tremendous
> value to a wide variety of people.

Well, thanks for endorsing my viewpoint. :) But there's more to my thoughts
on it than that...

Ryan's thesis can be boiled down to:

- the more people value something, the more they are likely to bend or break
rules in order to get it
- people value real life cash more than they value in-game rules

By this logic, of course, one can quickly conclude that people will value
the cash from eBay auctions more than they value the TOS for EQ. :) The
hardly-slowed pace of auctions on eBay attests to this. It also suggests
that Crockford is correct when he states that they are fighting the
inevitable.

Verant's approach is to attempt to remove the things that are valued more
than in-game rules, thus making the in-game rules paramount. This is, IMHO,
impossible, but it may be feasible to do it to the point where it ceases
being much of an admin issue.

However, the admin issues also relate to the nature of what goods are being
sold. This issue came up at the GDC panel I did with Brad McQuaid & Toby
Ragaini of AC as well as others (I mention those two in particular because
we had contrasting views).

The admin issues can be identified pretty readily:

A- does this result in increased admin calls, thereby reducing profit?
B- does this result in shortened gameplay, thus reducing dollars extracted
from the customer?

On (A), the question to answer is whether cons and misrepresentation of
goods are 1) possible, 2) generating many admin complaints.

Toby and Brad would give, I suspect, affirmative answers to A1, and to a
lesser degree, A2 (lesser because from any given transaction, a subset
results in dissatisfaction, and a subset thereof results in an admin call).
For UO, I would suspect that the answer to A1 is "not for the biggest ticket
item" and therefore the answer to A2 is "not much, really."

This is because of the goods sold. So let's break those down. First off,
often what are sold are accounts. But the question is really, what is it
that people wish to obtain with said accounts? The answer varies per game.

- high level characters
- specific portable items and equipment, including "rare" items
- real estate, comprising housing or other immovable but formal forms of
territorial ownership
- real estate, comprising spawn points, access to zones, or other immovable
but informal forms of territorial ownership

When purchasing an account for one or more of the above, there are elements
which are easily falsified to a buyer, and elements that are not.
Specifically, it is easier to commit fraud with portable items like
characters or items, and harder to do with real estate. Similarly, it is
harder to do with some sorts of "rares" and easier to do with others:
there's little point in falsifying a +3 sword because they are common, lots
of point in falsifying something that most people cannot identify, and
little point in falsifying items that people can identify visually but are
still rare.

To break down some specific examples from the three games:

- characters in EQ are moderately easy to falsify, because they are heavily
equipment dependent, and you can hand that off before completing the
transaction.
- full spellbooks in UO are easy to falsify because you can't open them to
check them before buying from a vendor.
- "Rares" like necromantic reagents in UO are hard to falsify because anyone
can recognize them at a glace.
- Houses in UO are hard to falsify because they're, well, large objects
sitting there that you can check on anytime whether the seller is online or
not.
- Equipment in EQ or UO is easier to falsify, but some swords are hard and
some are easy because of their availability (hard to run effective swindles
selling common items--cons depend on selling what looks like a rare
opportunity).
- Spawn points in UO are harder to control than in EQ or AC (I'd rank it
overall as EQ, AC, UO, in terms of easiest to hardest--though there are
places like the Lich Lord room in UO where it is just as easy to camp as in
EQ). Therefore they are harder to sell. There aren't many data points on
sales of spawn points yet, though.

Thus we can see that there are some types of item sales that are likely to
result in admin calls and other types which are not. Empirically, a lot of
admin calls resulted from vendors swindling people out of full spellbooks. A
lot less for people selling houses on eBay.

Next comes the question of whether these items reduce profit in terms of
reducing the game's longevity--or whether they actually enhance it.

- Characters obviously do. You shortcut the mountains to climb and the
oceans to swim. It's like a cheat code.
- Equipment which serves to enhance the character also does.
- Equipment gathered for "collectible" purposes, eg the rares market in UO,
actually *increases* account longevity. It has become an embedded elder
game. (one, I might add, with huge database costs. ;)
- Houses also extend account longevity, rather than shortening it. Yes,
houses are a "goal" to reach, but they also serve to tie the player to the
game. Players with houses are far less likely to leave the game.
- Spawn point access sales are purely detrimental to account longevity for
many reasons.

>From this we can conclude that it's possible that the benefits of selling
longevity-enhancing elements within the game may actually outweigh the cost
of admin calls as a result of swindles--particularly if what is sold is hard
to swindle with. You can reduce the amount of admin calls (thus making these
elements even more profitable) by increasing the levels of security on the
trades that are occuring. This means more to your bottom line, even if you
do not take the step of charging for these goods yourself.

As you might guess, Brad and Toby said that eBay auctioning was bad. And I
said that it was mostly good. And the reasons why are because of what gets
sold on the respective games. So I think Ryan's thesis is absolutely
correct--for EverQuest.

And, btw, I also think this shows that Daniel, Janus, and Steve on the
Realm/MiddleEarth teams had the right idea: just give every player a house
from the get go. :)

-Raph




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