[MUD-Dev] Are eBay sales more than just a fad?

[Matthew Mihaly]

On Wed, 13 Sep 2000, Dan Merillat wrote:

> 
> Matthew Mihaly writes:
> > 
> > Quite right! We don't allow the transfer of items bought from us with real
> > money, because we don't really see any reason to cannibalize our own
> > magical-artifact-selling business by allowing other people to get in on
> > it.
> 
> That's somewhat different, though.  Selling 'Purchace only' artifacts
> is a different market then selling things that may be aquired via 
> in-game mechanics.

Oh, they can be obtained via in-game mechanics. You can obtain 'credits'
(the stuff used to purchase artifacts) in multiple ways in the game.
Mentoring people who buy credits gets you credits, for instance. There is
also quite a hopping market of people selling credits to other players for
gold. (ie you can make a bunch of gold, turn around, buy credits, and then
buy an artifact).

 
> Obviously, you can't sell a 'medal of donation to the game' to another
> player, it's locked to you.  But what about the items on the biggest,
> baddest NPC?   It rather annoys the players when they've worked for months
> to get it and some rich brat with daddy's CC just goes and buys it outright.

 > A lot of people don't LIKE the 'buying to the top' method of gaming, especially
> when they have to compete with these people.  Now you have a ladder ranking
> where it's not just skill (and time spent), it's skill + RL cash.    And if we
> do that, it WILL become a commodity and it will be our responsibility.

That is just a function of a particular type of game design. You can't buy
your way to the top in Achaea, regardless of how many dollars you spend.
You actually may end up making things harder for yourself, because people
expect more from people loaded down with artifacts, and respect of other
players is the true measure of success.

I know a lot of you are thinking, whenever I harp on respect as a success
mechanism, that it's not possible in an EQ-type shard with 2000 players
but I beg to differ. And as completely lame a cop-out as this is, as no
one else seems to understand respect as a success mechanism, I'm not going
to go into detail as to how to do it, as who knows, I may start working on
a big project and show them Shadowbane fellas how groups v. groups is
done. =)

 --matt




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