[MUD-Dev] BIZ: Ban selling of in-game items for real cash?

[Matt Mihaly]

From: Peter Keeler
> Quoting Matt Mihaly <matt at ironrealms.com>:
>> From: Kwon J. Ekstrom

>>> Thanks, I dislike "banning" practices from players... doing so
>>> always increases admin overhead with little/no real gain.  I
>>> find that players react better to systems that discourage an
>>> action than an outright ban.

>> So banning, say, in-game sexual harassment isn't worthwhile? I'm
>> going to go ahead and strongly disagree with you there.

> That's stretching the point a lot farther than it was intended.

Fair enough. You didn't say how far it was intended. But still, if
you concede that banning any practice might be worthwhile, you
concede it's just a matter of cost vs. benefit, which is going to
differ for every online world.

> I thought the conversation was about players eBaying their
> items. I would be very surprised if anybody on this list disagreed
> with banning out of character abuse between players in any
> form. Reselling purchased items is hardly comparable to sexual
> abuse.

I thought the conversation was about developers selling items to
players, but I might be wrong. =)

> There's also the "if guns are outlawed, only outlaws will have
> guns" problem: if you ban eBaying outright, people will just get
> more sneaky about it. It may be better to provide an in game means
> for selling items so you can skim off the top for each transaction
> rather than eBay. My personal opinion is that I'd rather know
> about it and be annoyed by it than to be completely in the dark
> about it.

Why? People can't sell the items they buy from us to each
other. They are not transferable. They can sell whole characters but
will be banned if caught, and it's hard to avoid being caught with
any major character in a community no bigger than 4000 people or so.

--matt
_______________________________________________
MUD-Dev mailing list
MUD-Dev at kanga.nu
https://www.kanga.nu/lists/listinfo/mud-dev