Comments on: Atlantica Online RMT

By: Tesh

Tesh — Thu, 23 Oct 2008 21:16:04 +0000

Tinfoil hat on, it wouldn’t surprise me. I’ve pontificated before that RMT is an obvious and inevitable byproduct of the game design, and it’s not really hard to see it coming. To my mind, I’d rather capture that revenue above board like Puzzle Pirates, rather than allow it with a wink and a nod, using back end channels to maybe skim on the side.

I certainly think it’s possible those big wigs have their grubby paws in the third party market, but if they do, it’s highly inefficient, and morally distasteful. The morals I don’t think would bother them, but shareholders are pretty harsh on waste. I think that if they wanted to monetize that demand in-house, they would just do it up front.

Of course, if it’s a personal project rather than something to benefit the company…

By: Wolfgangdoom

Wolfgangdoom — Thu, 23 Oct 2008 20:57:45 +0000

Heres a thought, what if some of the big wigs over at Vivendi/Blizzard, along with other MMO companies actually have stock in the RMT companies?

By: Tesh

Tesh — Wed, 22 Oct 2008 18:26:08 +0000

Indeed, killing bugs is the point of a beta. I work as an artist on console games, and we can’t get away with signing a game off as done until it’s bug free, as defined by our internal testers as well as at least one set of external testers. The MMO mentality of “release and patch” while still collecting the full box price as well as subscription fees just doesn’t sit well with me. Of course, subscriptions in general don’t sit well with me.

The general laziness that comes from these business decisions is just… annoying. Not only do the games require patches and showcase half-completed work, but there’s the whole RMT thing that could easily be solved by a bit of planning beforehand. It’s like devs (or more likely, shareholders) don’t really think these things through, and are hoping to bank off of consumer habits formed by years of WoW success. To me, that’s inexcusably lazy and greedy.

I’m hoping that WAR takes WoW to the cleaners, so that they can both be more honest in providing a product worth the price. I’d love for Guild Wars 2 to floor them both. I’d really love a free MMO like Atlantica Online to slaughter them all. I don’t mind paying for a product that I think merits the cost. No subscription game does, especially given dumb design decisions like the RMT concern, and the crutch of high amounts of grind.

By: Wolfgangdoom

Wolfgangdoom — Wed, 22 Oct 2008 16:58:50 +0000

Excellent comparison at the end imo. I told myself I would wait a couple of months before entering WAR and ended up going the other way. Now I see the error of my ways and from this point forward, I won’t be joining a major MMO until it has been available for a few months. Server crashes, buggy gameplay (especially at end game it seems) and the omission of classes at launch have left a bad taste in my metaphorical MMO mouth.

It seems that what we have now is a few months of “trial and error” before the devs find ways to fix the issues that should have been addressed at beta. Isn’t that the whole point of a beta?

I can’t help but feel like the devs are treating us the same way the US politicians are. They feed us endless amounts of propoganda to vaguely support their claims, then laugh all the way to the bank once we have drank the koolaid.

Right now I’m extremely thankful for the console industry. They release high quality products that, for the most part work as intended and the only patches forced are those that make the game more appealing from a cosmetic standpoint. I’m this reason could be why so many MMOs aren’t released for consoles. They know the player base would reject these lame duck attempts and expose the product for what it really is. A half assed attempt.