Station Exchange White Paper

[Sheaf]

Originally Posted by Kolle

They could easily do that now.


It would be easier for them to rip people off doing this while having this market be against the rules actually. It would be harder for them to gouge people with it being legal.

There is no doubt that a company could easily just create gold, make a secret deal with a company like IGE, and sell it. But it's a huge risk and I don't *think* any of the major companies do it right now.

If it leaked out, the company would be finished.

[Trebla]

Originally Posted by Gallenite

Yep, already being done. Buying plat on non-SE is most definitely a gamble.

Then I applaud SoE for having the balls to risk short term profit in the form of banned account on the hope of long-term profit from maintaining the integrity of the game.

How is it working? Do you find fewer people willing to do this knowing that they could get banned/suspended for it? Or is it turning out to make no difference at all? Have any other games done this?

[Mero]

Originally Posted by Smed

We have a solid legal argument about our ownership of the IP so that didn't factor into our thinking at all.

Smed

Have an hour to spare... read Fairfield, 85 B.U.L.R. 1047 (2005); or have Zaffron send you a memo with rebuttal. Now, ...that's a "White Paper" I would like to read.

[Mero]

Originally Posted by Badass

Are you saying that you alone own all of the IP?

SOE: Yes.

Smed: IP? I own a few stocks in I.P., but not all of them.

Originally Posted by Badass

Or are you saying that you control the IP and recognize limited rights of ownership in the player?

SOE: Hell no. We own it all... the player owns jack.

Smed: No, I don't even sit on the board of International Paper, let alone control it. As for the "player", I never was a "player" though my wife did think I was one when she met me at the Science Fair in '81.

Originally Posted by Badass

What would be your argument against my brother should he seek to protect his right to sell his character or items?

SOE: Not a chance in hell we're going to disclose privileged information (ie., "work-product") over a public internet site, especially this god-forsaken SOE bashing, trash-talking, pro-Bliz website, ...so as to allow our future legal adversaries to preemptively prepare a rebuttal. Have you lost your mind?

Oh, and tell your brother....he better be one rich s.o.b. 'Cause we have money to burn and lawyers out the ass. You can't even piss around here without stepping over one.

Smed: Hell if I know....I just work here. Now quit interrupting me, my Blood Elf Warlock has died three times doing Beren's Peril because of this shit.

[Gallenite]

Originally Posted by Trebla

Then I applaud SoE for having the balls to risk short term profit in the form of banned account on the hope of long-term profit from maintaining the integrity of the game.

How is it working? Do you find fewer people willing to do this knowing that they could get banned/suspended for it? Or is it turning out to make no difference at all? Have any other games done this?

Thanks. That is exactly the reason we do this, too. It really is all about the long term game health, where health = more fun end-user experience = better retention = the lifeblood of any MMO.

In as much as it's an obvious removal of extra coin from the economy that would have otherwise contributed to ongoing inflation, affecting Joe Average Player in a negative way by driving prices artificially high, it's indirectly a very good thing.

A signficant enough botter/seller sweep can "fix" obvious bad effects visible in the in-game markets, causing an effective market "correction" in the in-game cost of resources, bringing more things back into affordability for more people.

I don't know that it's possible to specifically quantify "what would have happened otherwise" in terms of user behavior, but we definitely do influence the potential "need" people might otherwise feel to participate.

Cause/effect is measurable more in terms of what people see going on with in-game currency prices for in-game resources.

Too many botters, market prices go way up. Left alone, it can get bad enough to where joe average suddenly "needs" (or becomes far more tempted) to buy illegally to stay competitive, which is the vicious cycle we try to avoid at all costs. Bad for legit players.

Fewer botters, market prices remain relatively stable and inflate only at the rate that the overall game economy is expected to inflate, whereby there's enough legitimate cash entry during normal play to cover "what people need" + some of what people "Really Want," yet still leave them with a feeling that there's more, interesting things to earn/achieve their way into.

That's a reasonable definition of "fun" along the economic axis of the game -- You shouldn't be frustratingly poor, and you likewise shouldn't be rich to the point where there's no point to your money.

Though there will always be some people in both of those situations in any game, the idea is to make sure the majority is in the happy medium between, where the "fun" lives.

Reducing the effects of botters (and the illicit sales that occur as a result) is just one important part to that equation.

- Scott

[Creediki]

Nope, no response to conflict-of-interest.

I predict if this goes further that there will be the following phrase uttered at a dev meeting,

"Well, we could fix the difficulty of x, but then it's pretty cheap to buy online. Let's fix y instead".

[Gallenite]

Originally Posted by Creediki

Nope, no response to conflict-of-interest.

I predict if this goes further that there will be the following phrase uttered at a dev meeting,

"Well, we could fix the difficulty of x, but then it's pretty cheap to buy online. Let's fix y instead".

I'm staying out of the SE commentary, since that's Smed's article to comment on.

However, since you phrased that in terms of a development question, I'll use that as the in:

That has never once been a concern/balance point that has occurred in my time on either EQ or EQ2.

If anything, in a room full of developers, the hypothetical argument of: "Sure, that's annoying, but people can get around that by buying coin," would actually have the opposite effect of what you describe on all of the devs that I've ever worked with -- They'd make it a higher priority to address the problem, not a lower one.

- Scott

[Lyrical]

Originally Posted by Gallenite

Thanks. That is exactly the reason we do this, too. It really is all about the long term game health, where health = more fun end-user experience = better retention = the lifeblood of any MMO.

In as much as it's an obvious removal of extra coin from the economy that would have otherwise contributed to ongoing inflation, affecting Joe Average Player in a negative way by driving prices artificially high, it's indirectly a very good thing.

A signficant enough botter/seller sweep can "fix" obvious bad effects visible in the in-game markets, causing an effective market "correction" in the in-game cost of resources, bringing more things back into affordability for more people.

I don't know that it's possible to specifically quantify "what would have happened otherwise" in terms of user behavior, but we definitely do influence the potential "need" people might otherwise feel to participate.

Cause/effect is measurable more in terms of what people see going on with in-game currency prices for in-game resources.

Too many botters, market prices go way up. Left alone, it can get bad enough to where joe average suddenly "needs" (or becomes far more tempted) to buy illegally to stay competitive, which is the vicious cycle we try to avoid at all costs. Bad for legit players.

Fewer botters, market prices remain relatively stable and inflate only at the rate that the overall game economy is expected to inflate, whereby there's enough legitimate cash entry during normal play to cover "what people need" + some of what people "Really Want," yet still leave them with a feeling that there's more, interesting things to earn/achieve their way into.

That's a reasonable definition of "fun" along the economic axis of the game -- You shouldn't be frustratingly poor, and you likewise shouldn't be rich to the point where there's no point to your money.

Though there will always be some people in both of those situations in any game, the idea is to make sure the majority is in the happy medium between, where the "fun" lives.

Reducing the effects of botters (and the illicit sales that occur as a result) is just one important part to that equation.

- Scott

Its getting to be that if you are running an MMO, you need to have some knowledge of macroeconomics. If not, a game world's economy could get real screwed up fast. Do you guys have anyone with degrees in Economics on staff? It has to be pretty hard to keep an economy in "balance." Is controlling how resources are used and spent as a big a headache as any other design aspect?

I remember an article by Richard Garriott talking about the pressing issues of a virtual economy. His comment was that a virtual world is like the real world. One of his main assertions was that dev teams are like the government (and that they needed to put forth fiscal and monetary policies like the Federal Reserve does for the US) in a virtual world, but many dev teams don't see themselves like that.

[Froofy-D]

Originally Posted by Gallenite

In as much as it's an obvious removal of extra coin from the economy that would have otherwise contributed to ongoing inflation, affecting Joe Average Player in a negative way by driving prices artificially high, it's indirectly a very good thing.

Cause/effect is measurable more in terms of what people see going on with in-game currency prices for in-game resources.

Too many botters, market prices go way up. Left alone, it can get bad enough to where joe average suddenly "needs" (or becomes far more tempted) to buy illegally to stay competitive, which is the vicious cycle we try to avoid at all costs. Bad for legit players.

Fewer botters, market prices remain relatively stable and inflate only at the rate that the overall game economy is expected to inflate, whereby there's enough legitimate cash entry during normal play to cover "what people need" + some of what people "Really Want," yet still leave them with a feeling that there's more, interesting things to earn/achieve their way into.

Its pretty complicated. On one hand, the example most people cite against botters is FFXI where gil farmers cause inflation of everything. However, banning the farmers in WoW caused the exact opposite effect from what I saw. On Blackhand, a high pop server, raid consumables were fairly stable in price. Then when blizz did a round of farmer banning consumable prices went through the ceiling. Resist pots, mana pots, and the herbs that make them became absolutely ridiculous in price due to lack of availability.

So it seems like farmers may cause inflation inflation (due to there being an excess of gold in the economy), however simultaneously they keep prices down on mundane items (basically annoying stuff to farm) since they put so many of them on the market.

[Gallenite]

Originally Posted by Lyrical

Its getting to be that if you are running an MMO, you need to have some knowledge of macroeconomics. If not, a game world's economy could get real screwed up fast. Do you guys have anyone with degrees in Economics on staff? It has to be pretty hard to keep an economy in "balance." Is controlling how resources are used and spent as a big a headache as any other design aspect?

On the surface, it does look like there are a lot of parallels, but I don't think we have anyone degreed in it. (I did get a B in macro, though I know for a fact we have way better students on the team than me who likely did much better.

Achievement-MMO economies are as much about Economy (as a big scary proper noun) as they are about "how small elements can affect the big-picture, treating what we're calling 'economy' as a holistic system that is greater than the sum of its parts."

There are lots of different paths of learning that can help people familiarize themselves with that kind of thinking. Computer science, electrical engineering, anthropology, biology...and so on. An MMO economy is just one more "system" to apply that kind of thinking to. Looking at it in that light, we actually have quite a few people who have had little problem applying a wide variety of education and experience to this particular kind of system.

I also think there's a very real argument to be made that trying to make an MMO economy simulate a real economy as an actual economist/designer might be tempted to do, would be significantly less fun if placed into an Achievement-oriented MMO.

An achievement oriented game where you have a more reasonable chance of becoming part of the "okay-to-well-off" set than you do in the real world is more likely to be equated with "fun," and "real" economies are traditionally less fun than what's found in most MMO's I've played. (personal opinion) They certainly tend toward having fewer people who feel like they're doing well.

- Scott

[Rum]

those damn kids and there instant gratification... oh, wait a minute.

" Players older than 33 and younger than 38 accounted for the majority of the purchases "

[Creediki]

Originally Posted by Gallenite

I'm staying out of the SE commentary, since that's Smed's article to comment on.

However, since you phrased that in terms of a development question, I'll use that as the in:

That has never once been a concern/balance point that has occurred in my time on either EQ or EQ2.

If anything, in a room full of developers, the hypothetical argument of: "Sure, that's annoying, but people can get around that by buying coin," would actually have the opposite effect of what you describe on all of the devs that I've ever worked with -- They'd make it a higher priority to address the problem, not a lower one.

- Scott

I'm not sure which method of reading chicken entrails was used for developer decisions in EQ. In EQ2 you have both open and non-open environments to worry about. Neither game development environment seems to be the one I am talking about. I appreciate that your team may not have the attitude I am talking about, but my concern would be that in the future management would have a disincentive to putting such a team as yours together.

[Andric d'Regor]

Good subject & I for one woudl love to see comments from other companies' devs on this. I would be stunned if the SOE Exchange service wasnt a matter of interest to many other companies.

[Maxxius]

So from my understanding, for a full year SOE made abut 1/4 million dollars off the exchange. Had you added only 1,000 more subscribers for the year you would have made about the same.

It seems to me you would make more money working on the quality of the products you are involved in rather than trying to whore off secondary pixel sales. You will never generate the money companies like IGE do for several reasons. First IGE pretty much "sweatshops" and second, the "blackmarket" will always undercut the "official" market.

[Smed]

Originally Posted by Creediki

Nope, no response to conflict-of-interest.

I predict if this goes further that there will be the following phrase uttered at a dev meeting,

"Well, we could fix the difficulty of x, but then it's pretty cheap to buy online. Let's fix y instead".

sorry.. no response because I was travelling to Vegas for DICE.

Do I think this is a conflict of interest? Yes if it's game impacting and it's us selling it directly in the CURRENT generation of games. Players selling to each other... I think on SE servers it's ok because the players in that community choose to participate in it. No if it isn't on those servers.

In general I think all bets are off for the future because there are all kinds of cool things players could build and sell to each other. I just think the games need to be designed from the start with that in mind and that the community as a whole sees it as a positive thing. That's why we're not doing it in our other current games and why we're not moving it to other servers in EQ II.

What kinds of things could I imagine in the future? No sub fee games with a lot of content creation options that players can choose to buy.. stuff that doesn't impact the game itself. I think that could be a very reasonable tradeoff in future games. Do you really care if somebody buys a hat that makes their character look different? Probably not. But you do care if you can by the magic sword of buttkicking and use it in PVP. There are lines that are probably reasonable to draw and we'll see how they go.

Smed