RMT and other gaming conflicts

[crashhelmet]

There's another issue to deal with as far as RMT is concerned. While I don't know how the RMTAH in D3 secifically works, because I'm refusing to play it.

In WoW, there was an issue with gold being stolen and not farmed in its traditional sense. Players were having their accounts hacked, banks and coffers emptied, and the gold was sold by these sites.

What kind of security is in place to prevent someone from hacking an account and buying things with someone else's money?

[Nekojin]

There's another issue to deal with as far as RMT is concerned. While I don't know how the RMTAH in D3 secifically works, because I'm refusing to play it.

In WoW, there was an issue with gold being stolen and not farmed in its traditional sense. Players were having their accounts hacked, banks and coffers emptied, and the gold was sold by these sites.

What kind of security is in place to prevent someone from hacking an account and buying things with someone else's money?

That is another facet to the problem. The unscrupulous sorts who can (and do) steal accounts can freely sell from stolen accounts until they get banned, and they don't care when they do get banned, because it's not their account in the first place. The person whose account it legitimately was loses their account (possibly permanently, unless they can convince the GMs that their account was hacked/stolen), and the thief trots off to the next compromised account.

[HYHYBT]

This may be a stupid question... but why has this conversation progressed seemingly as if degree doesn't matter? At least, in one sense... I'm an outsider just watching, but it seems to me that the activities, regardless of the motives of anyone involved, are only a problem when the volume is high, and high volumes are exactly what they can spot and stop (or at least slow down considerably) by banning the offenders.

[Nekojin]

Partly because there's no real information on how much the gold-sellers are actually affecting the economies, and because they're the scapegoat du jour. I don't deny that they have an effect, but how significant is it, really? The market for RMT is driven by the buyers, not the sellers - if there's no buyers, it wouldn't matter how many sellers there were.

Part of the problem, as I said a moment ago, is that the RMT people are a convenient scapegoat. We know that some games and some servers have had their economies tank. We know that there are some RMT employees grinding popular areas for high-demand trinkets and supplies. But there's been no effort to link the chain between them - it's just assumed that they're the cause and culprit. People see a correlation, and assume causation.

[Hyena Dandy]

Who cares? There's always an imbalance. Some people have more time to dedicate to gaming. Some people have more money. Some people have both, or neither. There's no such thing as a level playing field, and there never has been. There's only been the illusion of such.

And that's kind of a point I've been thinking about. The other side of the equation is that, for a lot of games, being of the appropriate level/having the appropriate gear is kind of necessary to actually enjoy yourself. You won't have as much fun if you don't.

If you like the kind of game, but DON'T have the time to do all that, but do have the money to buy it... Then you can still have fun. And someone who put all their effort into getting whatever the best weapon is, and someone who bought it with cash... Both have the same weapon. And their abilities to compete in the game are functionally the same. If paired against each-other, the better player would win.

So what about an imbalance? It seems to me that there can be just as much of an imbalance and danger to new players who haven't gotten everything if you have high-experience people going around wrecking their shit as if you have really rich people going around wrecking their shit. Having the time to put into a game to reach level 20/40/60/80/100 whatever is no more a guarantee of good behavior than having the cash to.

[Gravekeeper]

Partly because there's no real information on how much the gold-sellers are actually affecting the economies, and because they're the scapegoat du jour. I don't deny that they have an effect, but how significant is it, really? The market for RMT is driven by the buyers, not the sellers - if there's no buyers, it wouldn't matter how many sellers there were.

No real information? Aion was destroyed by goldselling to the point where, ironically enough, your *level* became meaningless. A level 50 could be brought down by a level 40 that had an extra $200 to blow on gold. People who just played were fucked because the high rate of goldfarming drove up all the AH prices till they were out of reach for regular players without hundreds of dollars laying around in disposal income.

WoW server economies have been affected by goldselling for years. Causing deflation or inflation depending on the tactics of the goldsellers and disruption of players themselves with bot farming and spamming.

Spamming especially has a negative affect on your customer base. No one wants to play a game where they're bombarded by advertising at every turn.

[Nekojin]

No real information? Aion was destroyed by goldselling to the point where, ironically enough, your *level* became meaningless. A level 50 could be brought down by a level 40 that had an extra $200 to blow on gold. People who just played were fucked because the high rate of goldfarming drove up all the AH prices till they were out of reach for regular players without hundreds of dollars laying around in disposal income.

WoW server economies have been affected by goldselling for years. Causing deflation or inflation depending on the tactics of the goldsellers and disruption of players themselves with bot farming and spamming.

Spamming especially has a negative affect on your customer base. No one wants to play a game where they're bombarded by advertising at every turn.

Again, you're conflating several different issues all into one catch-all. Spamming, gold-selling, and bot-farming are all separate things. Related, yes. But they are separate, and can be (and are) addressed separately by developers and game-masters. Spammers are the easiest to spot and stop. Bot-users are harder, but certainly possible with a little vigilance. Actual gold-selling, however, is very difficult to accurately detect and prevent without having a significant chance of getting false positives, and driving away good players.

I'm interested in your data on Aion being ruined by gold-sellers. Is there proof that it was the gold-sellers that caused it? Some way to show a concrete connection between the two? Because this falls into precisely what I'm talking about - there's a correlation, but you're not demonstrating causation. You keep asserting it, but haven't shown any evidence of a cause-and-effect relationship.

[Gravekeeper]

Again, you're conflating several different issues all into one catch-all. Spamming, gold-selling, and bot-farming are all separate things. Related, yes. But they are separate, and can be (and are) addressed separately by developers and game-masters.

They're all intimately connected. I don't know who or what you think a goldseller is, but the % that are respectful businesses is by far the minority. Do you think you can actually review and regulate them so you only have the "good" ones in your game?

If it is, as you say, impossible to prevent, how would it be possible to regulate?

Because this falls into precisely what I'm talking about - there's a correlation, but you're not demonstrating causation. You keep asserting it, but haven't shown any evidence of a cause-and-effect relationship.

Dude, Aion is practically synonomous with "Goldselling". It was one of the single biggest complaints everyone had about the game and why many left it in droves. There were countless forum posts about it. Its mentioned in the game reviews. There were articles on it on gaming sites. Hell it even came up in developer interviews. Its economy blew up with inflation and no one could afford anything on the AH unless they paid actual money for it.

Aion was a case study in what happens when you do nothing to prevent goldfarming and exactly what would happen to any traditionally designed MMO that throws open the flood gates so to speak.

It may not matter in WoW these days as Blizzard themselves eventually ended up ruining the economy themselves. But previous to Blizzard wildly inflating gold earnings, WoW had a problem with deflation due to goldsellers flooding the AH with bot farmed crafting materials and items. Undercutting everyone. Then BC hit and it flew in the opposite direction. Then LK hit and Blizzard basically just went "You know what, here, everyone just have shit tons of gold". Which they then tried to combat by just adding giant stupid money sinks like mount training. So goldselling really doesn't do much of anything to the game these days as its economy is pretty silly now.

But again, a game that is not designed with goldselling/RMT in mind will be adversely affected by it. Because it an external factor outside of the parameters the designers accounted for. Allowing gold selling with no policing will sink a traditional MMO ( Aion, hell, half of the MMO's NCsoft has published as they're fucking awful at moderating their games ). Trying to regulate it so you only have "good" goldsellers is no less difficult than policing it. Its kept to a dull roar in most games because of the fear of being banned. If you removed that, it would go hog wild.

The problem with both our positions here is you're arguing retroactively. I don't have a problem with a game that is designed with goldselling/RMT in mind. Because than the design accounts for it. I probably wouldn't care to play it. But at least the game would be capable of handling it. However, retroactively trying to add it to a game that was designed as a traditional MMO is a different ball game and opening a can of worms on the player base.

Fairness is the single most important virtue a game designer can impart to a game. Game's that aren't fair don't get very far. Balance is the single most bitched about aspect of every single online game ever created.

There is a difference between potential fairness and external short cuts. You're trying to say the two are the same thing. They are not. A level 20 vs a level 40 is not "fair", but both players have the same potential fairness. They're both working with the same tools and can eventually achieve the same level. The game maintains fairness by ensuring the level 20 and the level 40 are never brought into direct competition.

However, an external short cut where a person's real world resources become a factor to in-game success is not fair. A player should never lose because they can't afford to win. You don't pit people's real world economic status against each other. Its not fair. They get that sort of "gameplay" every day in real life. Why would they want that in their entertainment too?

If you're going to incorporate a gold selling/RMT system into a game design, it cannot offer an advantage of power. It can offer convenience, utility or cosmetics. ( Team Fortress 2 is an example of it done right. ) But it can't offer power. Because now you're pitting haves against have-nots in what should be a form of entertainment.

If you want an example, look again at Aion. They added a cash shop. It sucked fucknuts because it let you buy power. You could just buy higher stats. In a game whose pvp was already a free for all ( It doesn't seperate levels, you can get fucksticked in one shot by a level 50 at level 4 ) and gear dependent. Yet more players left.

Where's Aion now? Its subs dropped like a fucking rock after the first couple months. Then it eventually failed as a subscription game and was converted to yet another F2P failure that NCsoft just leaves running with a handful of GMs. Which is pretty much their MO at this point. Toss out an MMO, don't bother to police the goldselling, get a quick cash grab from the sales then convert it to F2P with a cashshop after it fails as a sub game. Keep it running on a skeleton crew till it no longer makes any money than shut it down.

Which to be honest is kind of a shame because it was a beautiful game with solid combat mechanics. In the hands of a company that gave a shit it could have been pretty good.

[Hyena Dandy]

They're all intimately connected. I don't know who or what you think a goldseller is, but the % that are respectful businesses is by far the minority. Do you think you can actually review and regulate them so you only have the "good" ones in your game?

If it is, as you say, impossible to prevent, how would it be possible to regulate?

Basically, free market. Via competition. By providing a way to have an RMT system that's totally legitimate,

However, an external short cut where a person's real world resources become a factor to in-game success is not fair. A player should never lose because they can't afford to win. You don't pit people's real world economic status against each other. Its not fair. They get that sort of "gameplay" every day in real life. Why would they want that in their entertainment too?

And what about people who don't have time to devote to the game, but do have resources? Who want the entertainment but lack the time to spend on it?

You could just buy higher stats. In a game whose pvp was already a free for all ( It doesn't seperate levels, you can get fucksticked in one shot by a level 50 at level 4 )

...So, that's a problem with Aion, isn't it? I mean, if I'm a level four, I'll get fucksticked in one shot by a level fifty whether he got to level fifty with cash, in-game effort, or hacking the game code.

[Gravekeeper]

Basically, free market. Via competition. By providing a way to have an RMT system that's totally legitimate,

And that's forward. If you read my post, you'd see my problem was with the retroactive aspect of the argument.

And what about people who don't have time to devote to the game, but do have resources? Who want the entertainment but lack the time to spend on it?

And again, if you had read my post...

Time is a factor that is accounted form in a game's design. If you only devote 6 hours to the game, you're going to be on par with anyone else that only devoted 6 hours and the game is only going to have you competing with people in the same time frame. Because the game is designed with a linear progression. You will not be on par with someone that devoted 6 hours and $200. Are you seriously okay with losing a game all the time because you can't afford $200?

...So, that's a problem with Aion, isn't it? I mean, if I'm a level four, I'll get fucksticked in one shot by a level fifty whether he got to level fifty with cash, in-game effort, or hacking the game code.

Did you read my post at all? Because it seems like you randomly selected 3 sentences to respond too. -.-

[Hyena Dandy]

Did you read my post at all? Because it seems like you randomly selected 3 sentences to respond too. -.-

I can not at all figure out the thesis of your argument. I'm responding to points that I thought were the important ones.

Time is a factor that is accounted form in a game's design. If you only devote 6 hours to the game, you're going to be on par with anyone else that only devoted 6 hours and the game is only going to have you competing with people in the same time frame. Because the game is designed with a linear progression. You will not be on par with someone that devoted 6 hours and $200. Are you seriously okay with losing a game all the time because you can't afford $200?

No. Because I think someone who can devote six hours and $200 should instead be playing with the people who can devote fifty/a hundred/whatever hours. Because that's where their power level is going to be.

[Nekojin]

They're all intimately connected. I don't know who or what you think a goldseller is, but the % that are respectful businesses is by far the minority. Do you think you can actually review and regulate them so you only have the "good" ones in your game?

If it is, as you say, impossible to prevent, how would it be possible to regulate?

They're not as intimately connected as you think. Spamming is spamming - it doesn't have to be a gold-seller to be a spammer. "Barrens Chat" has become synonymous with spamming, and it's far from unheard for people to be harrassed over things mentioned in Trade or other chat channels.

Dude, Aion is practically synonomous with "Goldselling". It was one of the single biggest complaints everyone had about the game and why many left it in droves. There were countless forum posts about it. Its mentioned in the game reviews. There were articles on it on gaming sites. Hell it even came up in developer interviews. Its economy blew up with inflation and no one could afford anything on the AH unless they paid actual money for it.

Aion was a case study in what happens when you do nothing to prevent goldfarming and exactly what would happen to any traditionally designed MMO that throws open the flood gates so to speak.

And yet, you are still hand-waving the connection. You're begging the question and assuming that the correlation is the causation.

It may not matter in WoW these days as Blizzard themselves eventually ended up ruining the economy themselves. But previous to Blizzard wildly inflating gold earnings, WoW had a problem with deflation due to goldsellers flooding the AH with bot farmed crafting materials and items. Undercutting everyone. Then BC hit and it flew in the opposite direction. Then LK hit and Blizzard basically just went "You know what, here, everyone just have shit tons of gold". Which they then tried to combat by just adding giant stupid money sinks like mount training. So goldselling really doesn't do much of anything to the game these days as its economy is pretty silly now.

I was in WoW from the start. Gold was ALWAYS easy to earn, and hard to spend. There were never enough gold sinks in the economy. Once you hit level cap at any stage of the game, everyone other than the super-elite pinnacle of new content raiders consistently had more money than they were able to spend, because everything they needed at that point were drops, not crafted items. I knew people in higher-tier guilds who had thousands upon thousands of gold that they literally had nothing to do with it, even in Vanilla WoW. Some of them loaned it to teammates. Some of them stockpiled it and bought every vanity item that Blizzard released (such as new mounts and pets). And a few sold the gold to people who had less time, but had a desire for things that gold could buy.

There's one guild member on my Horde guild on Gurubashi who has had a sustained gold level over a million gold since shortly before Burning Crusade, who hasn't dropped below a million, EVER, despite spending gold on everything that his character can practically spend gold on. This is evidence of a problem - lack of gold sinks at the high end.

In role-playing terms, the game becomes too "Monty Haul," with not enough shopkeepers to drain the players' coffers. That's a problem that Blizzard still struggles with. Some of their gold sinks (barber shop, for example) fell utterly flat.

The problem with both our positions here is you're arguing retroactively. I don't have a problem with a game that is designed with goldselling/RMT in mind. Because than the design accounts for it. I probably wouldn't care to play it. But at least the game would be capable of handling it. However, retroactively trying to add it to a game that was designed as a traditional MMO is a different ball game and opening a can of worms on the player base.

I'm not arguing to make games that already disallow RMT, start allowing RMT. I'm not sure where you got that idea from, but it wasn't from me. My point was that it's functionally impossible to prevent, and very difficult to police. As with real-world crimes, it's pretty much impossible to proactively prevent it, you can only react once it's happened.

Fairness is the single most important virtue a game designer can impart to a game. Game's that aren't fair don't get very far. Balance is the single most bitched about aspect of every single online game ever created.

There is a difference between potential fairness and external short cuts. You're trying to say the two are the same thing. They are not. A level 20 vs a level 40 is not "fair", but both players have the same potential fairness. They're both working with the same tools and can eventually achieve the same level. The game maintains fairness by ensuring the level 20 and the level 40 are never brought into direct competition.

Fairness is an illusion, a perception. While it's important to have a perception of fairness (eg, arenas that only have max-level players in them), that perception is entirely illusory. Everything tips the scale in one direction or another.

However, an external short cut where a person's real world resources become a factor to in-game success is not fair. A player should never lose because they can't afford to win. You don't pit people's real world economic status against each other. Its not fair. They get that sort of "gameplay" every day in real life. Why would they want that in their entertainment too?

If you're going to incorporate a gold selling/RMT system into a game design, it cannot offer an advantage of power. It can offer convenience, utility or cosmetics. ( Team Fortress 2 is an example of it done right. ) But it can't offer power. Because now you're pitting haves against have-nots in what should be a form of entertainment.

I mostly agree with you, except that you're short-cutting the logic a bit here. If the RMT market only offers what is normally possible throughout the course of normal gameplay (a la Diablo 3), there's no unfair advantage in being able to drop $200 on a Sword of Uber, since someone else was able to find the Sword of Uber themselves. The $200 becomes nothing more than a substitute for time - they're skipping hours of grinding to find their own Sword of Uber, because someone else found it for them. Unless your goal is to only have the people who can play for 8+ hours per day be the only competitive players, this is a way of bringing the game close to parity for people who can't manage the luxury of that much game time.

The only time it becomes an inherently unfair advantage is when the Sword of Uber doesn't actually drop in the game, can only be bought in the cash shop, and is better than anything that can be found (or even just better than 99% of what can be found).

If you want an example, look again at Aion. They added a cash shop. It sucked fucknuts because it let you buy power. You could just buy higher stats. In a game whose pvp was already a free for all ( It doesn't seperate levels, you can get fucksticked in one shot by a level 50 at level 4 ) and gear dependent. Yet more players left.

When the parent company is directly selling something that cannot be earned through normal gameplay, then yes, that's an inherently unfair advantage.

And I personally loathe the level-based advantage when it's not segregated. Memories of high-level EQ players rampaging and killing players in the newbie zones still sticks with me. Memories of having Lv. 60 Alliance players running around Hillsbrad in WoW, too. There's no fairness in that, no honest competition.

Similarly, there's no competition between a Lv. 84 character and a raid-equipped Lv. 85. It's entirely one-sided. Games that are both level- and equipment-based can never provide a level playing field. It's an illusion, a myth, a self-deception.

Where's Aion now? Its subs dropped like a fucking rock after the first couple months. Then it eventually failed as a subscription game and was converted to yet another F2P failure that NCsoft just leaves running with a handful of GMs. Which is pretty much their MO at this point. Toss out an MMO, don't bother to police the goldselling, get a quick cash grab from the sales then convert it to F2P with a cashshop after it fails as a sub game. Keep it running on a skeleton crew till it no longer makes any money than shut it down.

Which to be honest is kind of a shame because it was a beautiful game with solid combat mechanics. In the hands of a company that gave a shit it could have been pretty good.

By your own assertion, Aeon was ruined by NCSoft tipping the scales themselves, in providing things that couldn't be had any other way.

[Gravekeeper]

I can not at all figure out the thesis of your argument. I'm responding to points that I thought were the important ones.

The "thesis" of my argument is that allowing goldseller/rmt because stopping it is too much of a bother is a terrible idea and will only be detrimental to the health of a game. While likewise encouraging publishers to push even more nickel and dime bullshit to wring more cash out of consumers.

No. Because I think someone who can devote six hours and $200 should instead be playing with the people who can devote fifty/a hundred/whatever hours. Because that's where their power level is going to be.

But why exactly would anyone want to play a game where their powerscale was tied to their wallet?

They're not as intimately connected as you think. Spamming is spamming - it doesn't have to be a gold-seller to be a spammer. "Barrens Chat" has become synonymous with spamming, and it's far from unheard for people to be harrassed over things mentioned in Trade or other chat channels.

Barrens Chat was synonymous with Chuck Norris. -.-

Products need advertising. So how do you propose to regulate goldsellers?

And yet, you are still hand-waving the connection. You're begging the question and assuming that the correlation is the causation.

So your firsthand experience with WoW is valid evidence for your position, but mine with Aion is not?

Aion is a textbook case of an economy with too many sinks combined with utterly no moderating or policing of goldsellers. The result was wildly out of control inflation, spammers and bots everywhere disrupting the game and it becoming literal impossible for anyone playing fairly to advance or compete. With goldselling comes bots. Fuck tons of bots. Spamming bots, whisper bots, farming bots, Aion had it all and they were everywhere. Aion allowed you to set up private merchant shops. So bots even did that to advertise. You couldn't go 50 feet without running into a bot or a goldselling ad.

But fine, it you want:

Gold Spam A Sore Topic
Addressing Gold Selling
Gold Sellers out of the gate
Gold & Bots
The First Thing You See When You Log In

I can keep linking if you like, there's certainly no shortage of articles, threads and complaints about it. ;p

I was in WoW from the start. Gold was ALWAYS easy to earn, and hard to spend. There were never enough gold sinks in the economy.

Goldfarming caused deflation at first ( farmers would undercut players ) and inflation later ( earning power went up so more product could be farmed up to sell ). It isn't some big murky secret that goldselling causes inflation in MMOs. MMOs already have inflation by default for the exact reasons you specify. Currency is always entering the economy and eventually a player reachs point where their earning power is immense but they have nothing left to do with it.

This is a fault in the game's design and should be addressed as such ( As game's such as EVE or the upcoming Guild Wars 2 which is taking an interesting approach ). The problem is that goldfarming and selling increases this rate of inflation and thus server economic decay over time. As goldfarmers can leverage resources the average player cannot and increase the flow of gold into the economy at a rate higher than the average.

Aside from the economics, you have the problem of goldfarmers disrupting regular players with spam, bots and general dickery ( Harrassing and driving players away from their farming spots, etc ). It took a long time for Blizzard to get goldfarmers under control and down to the dull roar they are these days where you only have to ignore 3 or 4 people a day.

My point was that it's functionally impossible to prevent, and very difficult to police. As with real-world crimes, it's pretty much impossible to proactively prevent it, you can only react once it's happened.

I don't see why being reactive about it changes anything. We're not going to come up with software that can predict the future any time soon. It can be policed, otherwise WoW would be a cesspit like Aion. As would every other major MMO.

Fairness is an illusion, a perception. While it's important to have a perception of fairness (eg, arenas that only have max-level players in them), that perception is entirely illusory. Everything tips the scale in one direction or another.

Very philosophical of you, but missing the point. Game's should be as fair as possible. If they are not fair, you have failed as a game developer and you will piss off your players. End of story. Bringing people's real world economics into play is pretty damn unfair.

If the RMT market only offers what is normally possible throughout the course of normal gameplay (a la Diablo 3), there's no unfair advantage in being able to drop $200 on a Sword of Uber, since someone else was able to find the Sword of Uber themselves. The $200 becomes nothing more than a substitute for time - they're skipping hours of grinding to find their own Sword of Uber, because someone else found it for them. Unless your goal is to only have the people who can play for 8+ hours per day be the only competitive players, this is a way of bringing the game close to parity for people who can't manage the luxury of that much game time.

But now you've pissed off a different set of players who are your majority base: The ones spending the time to get the Sword of Uber. They now feel cheated because their accomplishment of getting the Sword of Uber has been cheaped by the fact any dipshit with $200 can just buy it. You've undermined achievement, one of the biggest driving factors for many gamers.

The Sword of Uber is valuable *because* it takes time and effort to earn. Making it purchasable negates that time and effort, cheapening its value. The Achiever type player now goes "Well why should I play this game if my accomplishments are meaningless?" and I can gurantee you that that type of player far outnumbers the type with $200 laying around.

You've also pissed off the average player as well that now has to put up with a dude wandering around with the Sword of Uber that has no idea how to use it properly because he hasn't been playing the game to get it. A phenoma seen constantly in WoW at high levels because of people shortcutting and buying high level characters. Who now have fuck all idea how to use them properly and just piss off group after group in random dungeons. -.-

And I personally loathe the level-based advantage when it's not segregated. Memories of high-level EQ players rampaging and killing players in the newbie zones still sticks with me. Memories of having Lv. 60 Alliance players running around Hillsbrad in WoW, too. There's no fairness in that, no honest competition.

Heh, Aion had a bit of that and yeah it was a piss off.

Similarly, there's no competition between a Lv. 84 character and a raid-equipped Lv. 85. It's entirely one-sided. Games that are both level- and equipment-based can never provide a level playing field. It's an illusion, a myth, a self-deception.

Its also a game design problem and should be addressed as one.

By your own assertion, Aeon was ruined by NCSoft tipping the scales themselves, in providing things that couldn't be had any other way.

The cash shop came much later as a sort of last ditch attempt to squeeze just a bit more money out of the corpse.

[Fire_on_High]

I'm gonna go to hell for this perhaps but I *LOVE* goldsellers who cause deflationary markets.

I've played on both kinds of server, and the ones I play most are all honest or deflated....when you play fair yourself there is *nothing* quite as sweet as a market where everything you buy is dirt cheap. Prices and markets settle nicely because everyone has everything they want and selling at "who the fuck cares?" prices becomes attractive compared to storage. It's a PARADISE when just questing and doing the dailies that you're in the area of/want exp from also is enough to pay your own way.

In contrast, one server I play on is heavily inflationary. It's miserable when I have to work several days just to afford one marginal green, and of course that's where I'm leveling one of the harder class/spec combos that really has to be shiny to not suck, terribly. At least right now I'm in a level range where I can afford to mix in some pvp gear and its notably better enough to justify still.

[HYHYBT]

A question, if I may:

In real life, I can spend half a day changing the oil in my car (and likely the other half trying to get the spilled oil off the concrete) or I can spend half an hour and some money at Jiffy-Lube and get the same thing. I could, with a lot of time, a lot of waste from mistakes, and risk of physical injury because I'm a bit clumsy sometimes, build a birdhouse... or I could buy one from someone who knows what they're doing, or from a store that gets them in bulk, or whatever. Hardly anyone considers this choice a bad thing, and in general, the people who do these things for themselves don't feel that effort is worthless just because someone else paid to have it done for them.

So what makes it *different* in an online game?