[MUD-Dev] Pay for Item MMOG : Entropia article on Slashdot

[Matt Mihaly]

On Thu, 12 Dec 2002, bradley newton haug wrote:

> Your stick wielding tiger woods analogy is false, offered as
> proof, I give you the BMW Driving analogy, I am faster than a guy
> that drives a pinto, I paid for that. I do not believe in buying
> objects in game with real money.  That isn't from a business or
> programming standpoint; it is from a player standpoint.

Well, what you're actually doing is paying for a service, just like
with a subscription fee. You don't actually own anything when you
buy stuff from us, for instance, and we reserve the right to take it
from you at any time, for any reason. (Though of course if we did
that capriciously, we'd not be in business long. That's also an
extreme case. We've never actually taken anything from someone who
paid for it, but we've done balancing, etc.) It's fairly similar to
a subscription service in the regards that they can cut you off at
any time, for any reason as long as they aren't doing it because
you're a member of protected categories like race.
 
> I don't like the concept of playing in a game where I get ganked
> because some 16 year old's dad bought him the glorious sword of
> woopass.  There are ways to do this right (Achea) and ways to use
> it to suck the life out of people, and make the industry worse for
> us all.  Entropia tries to rationalize a constant money flow by
> introducing us to the brilliant new concept of decay and upkeep
> and false achievement.  I already play that game, it's called
> Life.

Well, I don't think a game where you could get whooped just because
some kid's dad bought him the uber-sword would last that long. You
really have to balance the need to earn income with the fact that if
you simply pander to your huge spenders, you will alienate the rest
of your playerbase, and quickly have no playerbase left.

There is a difference with Project Entropia too (can't believe I'm
going to say a single good thing about them). Since you can get
money back out again, I think a case could be made that the
opportunity to actually make a real, legal profit from playing, it's
reasonable that the money you spend there degrade with time. I don't
know enough about the specifics of their system to know, but it
wouldn't be workable for a company to allow you to "buy-in" and then
cash out 3 years later at full value.

--matt

Bush "OKs" religious discrimination by federal contractors. More
wackiness to come!


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