f13.net

Linky (http://www.webwire.com/ViewPressRel.asp?aId=17963)


£27.49 a month?  Heh no.

Seems to be the trend. It doesn't take any particularly creativity to make a cash grab, and it's a good way to supplement any lack of innovation in the actual game experience itself.

Tying RMT to sub time is interesting, though.  There isn't a way to buy credits without buying time?*


* I did not bother to read the whole text.

The only difference between plans of the same rank and duration is the bonus credit amount.  Those bonus credits are redeemable for certain items and benefits like teleports and experience earnings boosts.  It's too early for me to say if the impact on the balance is worse than your average expansion with must-have items.

Several levels of priority higher is getting this question answered:

Is ArchLord fun enough to play, deep enough to keep playing, and infused with enough purpose to make it worth hooking up a monthly transfusion from my wallet?

No clue, they haven't released much about ArchLord's core features besides players can earn leadership positions by grinding the most.  Yeah, like Lineage 2 and RF Online don't already do that.  Given that about 1% of the MMORPGs ever made can meet the criteria of the previous paragraph, there's a 99% chance ArchLord has failed to entertain me before I even started playing it.

Did they really just call their (I'm assuming elf female) classes "Ever so delectable"?

WTF?  Do they just know that their game is geared to the "mom's basement" demographic, and they're going to milk that for all it's worth?

Also, has anyone tried some form of this game to report if it's more than just another Diku?  Does quest-based gameplay mean "interesting quests" or "Hail, kill me 50 Snoogles for a reward"?

Doesn't everyone?

Don't look into the whole "delectable elf" thing, really just don't...

Also looks like Fileplanet members will get access to another beta for a terrible terrible game.  If I can be assed I'll think about trying it so we can all have a good laugh or something.

Technically, I will have access to this beta....I'd be willing to lend the key to someone more eager to hurt themselves with this game

Awesome.

Character bonuses tied to real money in a heavy PVP game. What a great way to level the playing field

I for one, even if I can drop $500 on mmorpgs, will not participate in tiered pay scheme if it gives any in-game advantage. Play-field should be EVEN, basic of any good game.

It's guaranteed to suck. Has anyone ever trusted Codemasters with a game worth playing?

Codemasters bought The Realm.  That was a good move.  Codemasters sold The Realm.  That was a good move.

You're okay with somebody having more time as an advantage in a PvP game, but not more money? That mostly says something about the demographic you fall into. Just saying.

I don't think money or time should be an advantage. You should be able to get all of the same things either way.

Time is already an advantage, in any game with any form of competition.

However, I completely agree that money should not affects one standing in a stats-based game. But I also think this side of things (paying money to gain advantage in a diku-inspired game) is only going to benefit the short-term opportunists. Just avoid these games and go for the raft of ones that are both innovative and not this base.

Before, your choices to improve your PVP were to play more or, well, that was the only choice.

Now you can play more or pay more. I thought the accepted wisdom was that having choices was good, but perhaps a "true PVPer" wants his experience directed and simple: play more play more play more play more play more play more play more...

You are implying that money is not. Wealthy countries tend to produce more successful athletes per capita than poorer ones, because of better training facilities, better healthcare and diet, and so on. Also, time is money, and whatnot. People who have to work two or three jobs to feed their families have less time than well-educated and affluent students who can goof off during parts of their lives and still maintain an easy comfortable existence.

I can probably get access to this and LOTRO if I ask nicely enough.

I think we've really touched a nerve here. I don't know the answer, but I think the question speaks volumes about PVP and a level playing field. Just saying... You (the community's) response is worth noting. This really gets to the ebay for items, or soebay and the perception of fairness. But its never been fair has it? If you have a job vs being on the public dole, if you are raising a family vs living alone. Do you think this is a fair basis for an in game advantage?

No, what I was saying was that those with more time and even slightly less skill can still largely trump those with asstons of skill but very little time to use it.

Money is an advantage in the real world. Archlord, as does any other legit-RMTing, brings in the money to complement the disadvantage time already created. I rather enjoyed this near socialist ideal that kept it from largely being an advantage in the games. I support capitalism and ain't moving out of the U.S. anytime soon, but I also liked the ability to escape from it in something more interactive than a book.

The belief that RMT evens the playing ground with the full time workers crumbles under closer examination.  Off the top of my head:

People who play a game all day are just as capable of explotiing RMT to get ahead as people who do not.  Their income?  RMT sales (assuming they weren't already comfortably well off enough already... after all, they play the game all day instead of work).

People who play the game all day are probably even more likely to buy items than a working stiff, because they invest that much more of their interest in the game.  RMT actually further unbalances the playing field in that event.

See how many you can come up with.  :-D 

The initial thought, "I work all day, so I'll buy items so I can complete with people who play all day" is at fault to begin with.  In an open-ended game, even if everybody had equal amount of time to play per day, progress would vary depending on factors such as monster availability and how much time is spent socializing instead of grinding.  It seems that an even playing field cannot exist in a massively multiplayer persistant state environment.  Even if it did, there's no basis of fair competition here.  Might as well let go of the idea of even playing fields in MMORPGs, at least in a game where power advances on the character.  Guild Wars does a pretty good job of keeping things reasonably even, Elite Skills aside.

That said, I'm not sure how ArchLord is any worse than any other MMORPG, so I can't tell how much their credit system is going to fudge things.  I'm expecting Korean grind, which base everything on time investment.  Heck, even if there was such a thing as an even playing field in most MMORPGs, they're all so shallow that you don't need to know much more than to operate a hotkey bar.

You could always pay more to gain an advantage in a pvp game, you could buy items, game gold or even buy a max level account.  I have no objections to people exchanging RL money for time, although I think it can hurt the game (lineage 2). If buying items becomes almost required, the game attracts a lot of farmers. 

I object to this scheme and wouldn't consider playing because it's now in the companys interest to have a long cash grind to make players pay for the higher options.  I don't like grinds but can somewhat forgive a company for a PVE grind as it's common to believe they allow time for greater player interaction and help retention.  Milking players for higher rates just so you can make more money strikes me as wrong and I don't intend to reward that idea.

Yep. Don't get me wrong - I'm not in favor of this, nor would I pay for it. But I had to point out that there is no level playing field. Never has been, never will be. To claim that there is a level playing field without tiered payment schemes is to consume one's own BS.

So whats left? Twitch? I'll go out on a limb and say counterstrike is fair. Ive never seen cs items for sale. Why? Because even with little skill 15 min will get you enough credit to begin to buy better weapons and armor. But the basis of the game is twitch. You have to aim well and quicker than the guy your aiming at. Why cant we do a rock, paper, scissors That relies less on twitch? Or a game with as many builds as titan quest where you might suprise your opponent with a build that wasn't prepaired for? Guild wars came close to this but the lack of one on one or the reliance of guild vs guild locks a lot of the more casual crowd out. You guys are much better at this than I. What is the PVP game in the sky that we will all love/hate (if you don't lose sometimes something is wrong).

Asheron's Call has had RMT since its inception (Accounts bought and sold for RL dollars), and it's never been an issue; primarily because the game was designed for it not to be.  If you bought an account (As I did, five years ago), you either sucked and everyone just ganked you and took your stuff, or you were decent and for everyone else's purposes it was the same as if the original player had owned it.

Critical differences:  Being able to make new uber characters with money, versus simply buying someone else's.  The latter is preferrable, since it means that money can't inflate the market, only make the ownership change hands.

Secondarily, you want a game where owning an uber character doesn't matter if you suck at the game; you then presumably want a game that it's hard to be really good at, in "twitch/strategic skills" terms as opposed to "character sheet" terms, so that there's a scarcity of top-tier PvP talent.

Oh, and to respond to hal: All good MMO PvP must be twitch-centric.  Without it, you devolve into all the behaviors that are gnashed about here on a regular basis.  However, you are somewhat wrong to equate "twitch" with "CounterStrike", as if CS' character progression system (such as it is) and its methods of determining who wins in combat (twitch skill and situational strategery) are interlinked.

Also, good PvP is not rock-paper-scissors.

Here's a video example of what I'm talking about. (http://acmovies.phroztnet.org/Xantrax_Vs_Manny.wmv)  The melee and the mage each have entirely different playstyles - and yet, they can wield the same armor and combat is never so simple as "the mage wins from range, the mage is dust if the melee closes in".  On any given day, either one could win, with player skill being the deciding factor.  More PvP games should be taking that as their model.

OK. I appreciate your responce. Im 54 years old. Twitch isn't an option, and never was, I'm aware of who I am and what I'm capable of. PVP is a laudable goal because AI just isn't getting it as far as skilled opponents goes. I guess the answer is I should take up knitting? Or message boards where I tell the kiddies how great the game of Hunt The wumpas was back in the 70's?

Hey, I'm 20 and I've still played Hunt the Wumpus.  that was a cool game.

If you're into PvP, and twitch isn't an option, what I'd think is that you'd want PvP from a game more along the lines of Heroes of Might And Magic or Worms; something where you can have interesting, strategic combat without needing to be a wizard on the keys.

People have had a hard time translating games like that into a massively multiplayer format, though.  Hmm.

  HEY!  (http://www.inthe70s.com/games/wumpus/index.shtml#)

I got the wompas. Well OK, on the second try. There were no pits on the version I played on DEC PDP 8. Well like I was saying, back in the 70's.

The best "PvP" game that I've played that favors cunning old farts is Magic: The Gathering Online. The playing field there involves RMT and time (learning) to some degree, but what really tips the scales is the ability and the patience to analyse many card interactions and devise good decks.

I would aspire to being a cunning old fart. You could put that on my tomestone and I'd be happy, Well OK, happier. Well never mind. I'd be dead.

I'm seriously tempted to plagiarize Mencken's for my tombstone some day.  You can't improve on that.

Wow, in a PVP-heavy game where the top PVP players runs the server, you get bonus experience and items for paying more subscription money? Fuck, they just found a way to print money hats on a shitty, shit shit shit game.

This guy? (http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GRid=706)  The epitaph he wrote for himself, as a joke in a book, didn't actually make it to his tombstone.  It is amusing, tho.  "If, after I depart this vale, you ever remember me and have thought to please my ghost, forgive some sinner and wink your eye at some homely girl."

--
Alkiera

Time is only initial advantage, all but first person will 'reach the top' some time after others. Now money is permanent advantage, no sane buisness will say no to more money, so its only question of time when they will tie every aspect of the game into getting more money out of the players.

Dear ignorant PR spinmaster,

PvPers are after one or another form of a challange, 'charge my CC' is not one of them.

Please die in a watercooler fire,

PvPer

You identify with my "true PVPer" and thus agree with me 100%.

You wrote that what you label the "true PvPer" wants his experience "simple".  You haven't explained, however, why "charging my credit card" equals "more complex experience".  Somehow, single player games and online free games manage to span a gigantic gamut ranging from terribly simple to mind-bogglingly complex, all without touching my credit card.  Was this really a new dimension of "gameplay" that thinking PvP'ers were clamoring for?

Charging the CC only works for those PvPers that only want to win. The rest, who actually want to have some competitive fun and get better at doing so over time, are not as interested in this.

This is why I am glad ArchLord is doing this (and Space Cowboy). I think it's going to flop big in the US and EU, maybe closing the book for good on this sort of crap. RMTing as a black market works well because it's the exception. Legit-RMTing forces people to look at these games no different than they look at other expenditures. RMTing is here to stay, but when it's built into the game by the company itself, it's just a loose ponzi scheme. There's no way to "escape into a fantasy realm" with that sort of obvious money grab.

But the only way it can go away is if companies try it and fail publicly. So bring it on!

They'll just point to all the other Asian games that failed here and blame it on nation origin rather than RMT.

Yea, but the end result would be the same :)

As I understand it, PVP boils down figuring out the answer to "what is the highest hill I can reach". In chess or Street Fighter 2 there is no answer, because the highest hill hasn't been discovered (yet). In Checkers and Reversi (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solved_board_games), almost.

While on a way to some hill, players are characterized by their knowledge of the required actions and their ability to execute them. Paying for an advantage can offer new dimensions to each, for example: there are nature magic items on sale but no fire magic items, so perhaps nature is superior to fire, or, instead of training myself to counter sheeping I can buy an enchantment to do it and train something else.

Darniaq, I agree, so the house rules are: no more than 10 hours a week or 50 bucks a month, add 10 bucks if you really suck but don't tell anyone.

Perhaps I've read too much Iain M. Banks (http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1857231465/sr=8-1/qid=1155049008/ref=pd_bbs_1/002-0454775-4897648?ie=UTF8).

I don't think you can spin such shameless milking and pay-to-cheat into positive light. Paying to get in-game advantage is not at all different from using a hack to gain advantage. If you think it is all about 'climbing hills' hacking is the way to go.

My counter is that paying is the same as playing more than me. After all I'm earing money when not playing (or changing diapers...It doesn't matter. I've something to do). Not that paying is fair. It isn't and I don't support the concept. The point is being able to play more isn't fair either.

Exactly. Don't blame RMTing. Blame time (http://www.darniaq.com/wordpress/2006/01/general-gaming/forget-rmts-blame-time/). Or, at least, accept that if someone else has more time than you, they're going to get ahead sooner. Personally, I've gotten used to it, since, like, I've had no choice. I'm not getting more hours in the day and I only play when the kids have already gone to bed, which happens later each year. Woe be my l33t sk1llz.

I think one of the big issues with this sort of built-in RMT is that there will be people who can't afford more than the basic package, who will then realize that no matter what they do, ever, they will always be behind the people who have the larger package. People like that won't stay in the game long.

In other games, everyone pays the same amount to play the game. There are no bonuses associated with outside elements. People who get better get better through actions within the game world. Built in RMT gives the ability to be good while barely playing the game at all. This leads to feelings of "Why am I bothering to play if others are always going to be more powerful than me regardless of whether they play or not?

It does break the magic circle. However, everyone eventually comes to terms with time. That is the quintessential out-of-game advantage. A 22 year old living on their own working their first fulltime gig with only the shit they carried through college and therefore fits in their trunk has an inherent advantage a conscientous 36 year old bread-winning home-owning husband father of two. Both people pay the same money to play in the same world, but they are both playing at very different levels. They can be friends, but the former is going to lap the latter in levels many times over.

Not that I speak from experience as that latter. *nods* ;)

I'm not blaming either RMT or time for an uneven playing field, I'm blaming RMT and time and a plethora of other MMORPG design issues for preventing an even playing field to exist.  Those who play all day are perfectly free to engage in RMT, after all, and boost their position further. 

Really, the very activity of true competition within a MMORPG doesn't exist.  The basis of character advancement is the only place time really applies, but even if everybody had the same character you've still got problems.  If you're competing for resources it's always first come first serve.  If you're competing in open PvP it's really more of a popularity contest with haves and have-nots falling randomly to each side.  The Guild Wars method, restricting team sizes and playing them against eachother, is the only fair way to do PvP online.  Even then, ending up with perfect strangers on your team means a very uneven player skill distribution.

I'd probably care more about ArchLord offering an even playing field if I had any reason to believe the game itself was worth playing.

RMT doesn't even the tables, it skews it further.  The 22 year old can probably leverage that full time job to buy him some RMT goodness.  The 36 year old bread-winner may not be able to afford RMT in the face of paying his spouse's doctor bill.  A 14 year old who plays the game 100 hours a week in his mother's basement has time to farm uber items he can sell via RMT, and this provides him capital to buy other items in RMT to cement his #1 spot.

That was, however, a great scenario to explain the neccessity of having sidekick systems ;)

Fairness and equity are myths and lies.  Someone always has an advantage, regardless of how many rules you put in place to 'level the playing field.'

This is simply changing the playing field to favor a different group than usual. (Those with both excess time and excess cash.) Not that I expect anyone to play it; but then I didn't expect anyone to 'play' PE, either.

Why not slant the playing field toward the smartest players?  Games that reward you for being skilled at them to some extent reward time invested, but even more than that they reward those who use their time smartly to learn the most that they can.  Lum always fallaciously equated twitch skill systems with "whoever has the most time to spend is the best at the game", essentially the same sort of tyranny as a system based on hard levelling - and I've always disagreed.  Different people play different amounts of time, but in a system based on skill the differences in how they spend their time will usually be the most meaningful.

Based on accepted garbage measurements, I guess we should start with a a sixty second standardized psychometric test and let people allocate that number of character development points towards their character each play session. I'm sure that you could get MENSA to sponsor such a MMORPG.

Utter nonsense. Finding mobs to farm takes neither skill nor smarts. Having no other hobbies takes about the same attributes. Being "efficient" with your play time doesn't really take skill - you just socialize less, and grind more. Whoop dee doo.

If the focus of Archlord is pvp (which it looks to be) and the game is item centric, or takes forever to max out levels, it will fail. Just like how TOA ruined DAoC for a lot of us. PvPers will accept a reasonable amount of time invested = advantage in a fight, but only to an extent.

Giving someone the option to buy their char to pvp readiness is irrelevant, so long as I can compete on an even level w/in a reasonable amount of time I dont care if you bought or grinded your character. Honestly, from what I can tell, pvpers are getting less and less patient with grinds, I'm still suprised Lineage II went over as well as it did, I highly doubt it would happen again.

I think that there are about 50 people playing Lineage II. The rest of the 'players' are farming bots.

Lineage 2 wasn't originally very PvP centric. It was mostly a PvE game where people took a break every 2 weeks and dropped off about 3 days worth of exp in a mass slaughter 2 hour siege. PvP happened outside of sieges but... it wasn't like WoW or anything because there wasn't enough incentive to kill your enemies and a lot to risk if you died.

Still though, this made the fewer and further between PvPs feel like a lot more fun, and people would play really smart because there was a lot on the line.

It's kind of upsetting to me that the designers didn't feel people were PvPing enough in L2. I guess when the politics of the server get stale, subs go down in pretty large numbers because without PvP you don't have that endless stream of player generated end-game content. So now PvP has less risk, far less reward, and little scrolls that will let you instantly return to town in case you can't handle a fight. But it happens more.

Honestly the only real problem with L2, like Right said, is the fact that if you run a well balanced 9 man (full group) bot party, you can level 9 characters from 1 to 78 (current cap), in under 4 months. 6 months at the most if you're really slow. And one person can do this entire party by himself. In contrast, you could level a character legit, look for party, find friends who are support classes and hit 78 within 2 years... maybe.

Support classes increase leveling ability exponentially. Support classes blow ass to play. Botting mostly goes unpunished.

Pretty broken, but the game is still fun if you don't take it too seriously.

I thought L2 was sold as a PvP game though? If so, then what you describe is expected. Why bother with PvP before the level cap at all? It's Shadowbane all over again. Hit R5 (level 50) and then go play the game as intended. And level up the most efficient way possible (in a group, one player active, everyone else soaking up XP AFK, take turns).

It does not exist at the game mechanic level. However, it very much does exist at the experiential one. The perceived inbalance comes from player expectations. If they could stop caring about what others have and can do that they themselves do not have nor can't do, all these problems would go away. Instead, we have farming, twinking, powerleveling services and RMTing. It's a very real and tangible aspect of the genre that only an instantaneous collective epiphany would dissuade. Or, in other words, "never".

You took my statement out of context. My comparison is about what the players are capable of doing in the game. The RMT thing is a separate element. My comment on that would be that the 22 year old (as I've described him, not all 22 year olds) simply has less to worry about. I make way more money now than I did 14 years old, but the bills are bigger and there's more than just me to feed, cloth and entertain :)

Why can't I be 22 today?!.

Games already do that. It's what is considered "smart" that is different.

Are you kidding me ?!?

No, he really isn't.

By the time WoW is a "PvP centric" game by comparison... wow.

Sorry for taking you out of context again, but I'm going to totally agree with you here and say that this is the only reason RMT exists.  Players build up an expectation they're going to compete with other players in a MMORPG, when we've already established that MMORPGs do not function as competitions.  So, that RMT happens at all is just preying on delusion, which I really can't approve of.  I'd rather smack those players and tell them, "Hey, wallet for brains, it's not a competition - put that thing away and learn to enjoy being where you are now."

That said, ArchLord comes off as no less balanced than any other MMORPG since they cannot operate as fair competitions regardless of the pay model or amulets of experience gain.   Considering that (if you pardon the stereotyping) Archlord made by a Korean company, it's probably just another Korean-potency grind.  That means I likely wouldn't won't be heavily involved in it anyway... maybe a little investigation investigation if they run a beta or free trial to see if my stereotyping was incorrect.

> we've already established that MMORPGs do not function as competitions.
Come on, that's not established at all.  It's high dependant on the game in question.

> So, that RMT happens at all is just preying on delusion, which I really can't approve of.
No the crappy, timesucking trendmills are very real.

That's true.  What we've established is that we can logically determine a game in which the participants start at different times, play different amounts of the day, and where players have different amounts of access to the methods of advancement do not allow character progression to be a fair basis of competition.  Sure, that excludes most MMORPGs, but I'm sure there are a few out there that don't make character progression a major factor.

You're saying the timesucking treadmills are the cause of RMT.  So am I, but I look a step further, at why the timesucking treadmill is seen as a problem that needs to be solved.  A person hates level 10, he wants to be level 20, so he treadmills.  It's that desire to reach that level that generates the misery of a crappy treadmills.  The use of RMT is seen as a means to fill this desire faster.  However, the misery is caused by the player's belief that he can't be happy at level 10, not the lack of RMT.  When you're level 20, you'll want level 30, you'll still be miserable. The desire for artifical levels to make you 'happy' is the delusion, so blame that. 

That's looking at the skinner's box from the outside.  Blaming the designer for adding a time sucking treadmill is like a mouse blaming us for putting cheese on the trap.  This mouse chooses not to eat the cheese, but rather admire the traps for their unique architexture and move on once I've bored of them, and so RMT (buying a stepladder to reach the cheese) strikes me as delusional.  (Mice with stepladders courting death - such an adorable analogy.)

In other words, I think a better policy is to quit playing games the minute you realize you can't stand to play anymore.  RMT is paying somebody for cheats so you can continue to pay the developers who couldn't make a game enjoyable without cheating.  If enough people quit instead of RMT, maybe MMORPG developers will get the message that treadmill times that exceed the enjoyment of the game are bad ideas.

Be careful with words like "most mmorpgs". The only "most" here is as seen in a single unit of measure (subscription accounts) as published by SirBruce. Personally, the number of subscribers is an irrelevant comparison. It does not answer any of the real questions that need to be asked, about different business models, different sub-demographics, different experiences.

It's not about being Korean. It's about using the exact same game mechanic that specifically works well for RMTing, which lots of companies offer. Blizzard may hate what GPotato likes, but the player motivations in the game are the same. The former can turn its back on the practice and let all the extra bling go to the black market while the latter is both the pusher and the provider. And RMTing doesn't require diku either. It just requires inbalance.

24/7 Persistent world > Self-directed investment > Time-Inbalance > Farming > Twinking > Powerleveling > RMT.

Now, "microtransactions" are also emerging, but a bit differently. There's a big market for offering further ways to customize characters, portals and ingame worlds, but most of these do not include customizing one's ability in a game. This is the RMT that has no mechanical/balance impact, specifically offered in worlds that are not built on normal RPG conventions.

Just as lucrative, not as damaging to the player psyche :)

Levels are by no means "artificial" in the sense of having no intrinsic "fun" value.  In many games, certain aspects of gameplay (PvP in most games, but sometimes even socialization tools like decorating and emotes) are gated by levels, and the levels can ONLY be gained via treadmilling.  If what you want is to engage in PvP, and you need to be level 50 to PvP "effectively", then you want to be level 50.  There's nothing artificial or delusional about that. 

The blame for using timesinks/RMT/cockblockery to gate gameplay lies solely on the shoulders of the developer.  Blaming treadmilling on players is what shitty game designers do when they don't want to face the natural consequences of their own shitty designs.

No, they do it because it works. As in, it sells and is enjoyed. Not by everyone obviously, but by enough for it to naturally perpetuate.

There are different gamers to get though, so different developers go get them. Semantic nonsense yea, but really, that's the difference between competing for the same mindshare and creating or harnessing a new one. Spend $80mil on the WoW player or $10mil on a different one.

Time -> Better character/items + Better learned player skill + time to enjoy said character and skills

Money -> Better character/items + still no time to enjoy character -> Stand at bank for 30 minutes each night showing off stuff.

This assumes people pay money for more in a game because they don't have the time.  They still won't have the time after they spend the money and they certainly won't have the skills to survive in a heavy PvP environment.  It takes practice to do that.  They will have skipped that part.

If the game is so transparent that items and levels make up the majority of deciding who wins and who loses a fight, then the PvP population will go away anyway.  No true pvper will stick around in a game when they know people can bypass the content and whoops their ass just because they bought levels and items.

So, you'll be left with a bunch of people standing around the bank showing off their stuff without any real pvp'ing going on because nobody has the time.  It is a perfect MMOG for RL Executives.  Well, the ones too geeky to get into the country club.  Maybe this should be called Country Club Online!

And this is what makes or breaks a PvP game. As long as someone with crappy gear and good "skill" (Be it twitch, strategy, knowing when to use certain abilities, whatever the game is based on) can defeat someone with uber gear and no skill, then the game will do good. But seeing as Archlord is offering things like health buffs to people who pay more, I doubt the game will be anything other than item-centric.

I was saying it was about being Korean (stereotyping as that may be) because I wouldn't play such a boring Korean potency-treadmill with or without RMT. ;)  But you're right that's not what we're discussing here.
We're not in disagreement here, but rather looking at it from two sides of the same coin.  On one hand, the developers shouldn't make shitty treadmills.  On the other hand, players shouldn't buy RMT in order to continue to play shitty treadmills.

Most of the "potency-treadmills" you've burned out on, from EQ through WoW, were not of Korean origin :)

The point of buying RMT is to circumvent the treadmill and try to get to the game that's theoretically at the end of it, be that PvP or raiding or whatever.  Of course, in most cases it will turn out that the game at the end sucks as much as the treadmill did, but the RMTer still wins out because he found out that much quicker.

RMT doesn't always have to be a scam to prey on weak.  RMT could be used as a flexable payment system for games that couldn't get away with a subscribtion.  And I would never play a game with both.  Again Puzzle Pirates is a great example, you  can play most of they game without spending a lot.  I am sure I would spent more playing on a subscription server than I did playing on the RMT server. And I probably never would started a subscription in the first place if that was my only option.

Nope. Because it turns out that there are fuckloads of people with both an excess of time and money. It sucks that you and I aren't among that number, but there you go. The developer is banking on finding those people who would rather play other games instead of the shitty grind, but will invest the time in playing the end-game that they've paid a lot of moolah for. Good luck to them.

Since, in your example, the player finds out he was wrong to believe the RMT shortcut would bring happiness, he was deluded to begin with.  That's why I'm throwing around the word "delusion", why those buying RMT are deluding themselves, and those selling RMT are exploiting the deluded. 

There's a very big and easy to find discernable difference between the Korean-Potency treadmills of Lineage 2, RF Online, and Ragnarok Online and the American-Potency treadmills of EverQuest, Dark Age of Camelot, or World of Warcraft.  I haven't mentioned this before, but this difference is the Toys to Time ratio.  In your average Korean-Potency treadmill progression reaches points, often quite early, where you're expected to grind for 10 or more levels to get one new skill.  Often, you'll have your entire set of skills by level 20 and be asked to run another 30 levels with that.  In an American-Potency, you get a new skill every 1-8 levels at most, and this rate lasts until the end game when you've a ton of abilities in your lap.

In other words, it's not about how long the developers intended me to play, it's if they bothered to add enough game to be worth that time spent.  When you're tired of your toys and have been told to keep playing anyway, that is the difference between a grind and a game.

(I underlined all that because it was awesome.  :grin:)

Important differentiation factor addendum: note that "new skill" (a.k.a. "toys") means "totally different ability than you've had before" as not "upgrade copy of an ability you already have".  Simply changing the potency, color, or element is an upgrade (and a minor one at that) not a new ability.  Upgrades are better than nothing, but brand new toys/skills are what keep a player interesting for me.   For that reason, EverQuest 2 doesn't get as much slack as EverQuest did, because EverQuest 2's skill tree is heavier saturated with copies instead of whole new abilities.  Star Wars Galaxies NGE is a total trainwreck for this reason - it's like 30 levels until you get a new ability sometimes - pathetic!

Not enough toys for the amount of grind they ask of me, and I'm doing the same repetitive boring thing with no variation.  Enough of that and I'm out.  It's that simple.  I wonder how many people feel the same way?

The American-Potency treadmills I've had difficulty with are the ones that set the time between level too high for my satisfaction.  Guild Wars is a game I can enjoy a lot for this reason - they dump tons of new abilities on players, and provided I'm willing  to experiment the game stays interesting.  It's a pity Guild Wars doesn't have that massively multiplayer thing going, doesn't feel very worldly at all, but as a game it's good. City of Heroes has a great lower level toys to grind ratio, but around level 13-16 it slows way down.  I'm able to pull some novelty from doing the storylines embedded in the missions, but it's not enough.  This is why it's a game I can stomach in short bursts only.  Then I start a new character, get a cool new batch of toys to play with, and that lasts until I hit level 13-16 again.  A good temporary workaround, but I'll never reach level 50 that way, which is a pity considering Cryptic locked up a whole batch of toys for when I hit 50 (their alien heroes).

I've generously inserted the possibility that Arch-Lord may be different and that "Korean-Potency Treadmill" is a stereotype.   However, I've seen enough of their games to assume it's not worth buying Arch-Lord to find out.

Too many developers think that the social aspect is all a MMORPG really offers.  I don't think social aspect allow MMORPGs to operate regardless of toys:grind ratio.  Rather, the social aspect allows MMORPGs to operate despite a poor toys:grind ratio for a few unlucky players who friends drag them in.  In other words, a MMORPG with both a good toys:grind ratio and a social aspect gots a double hitter, where a MMORPG that doesn't (most) feels half complete.  Check out the toys:grind ratio on World of Warcraft, and that's with weak social dependancy systems.

Anyone know of any games not mentioned yet that have an awesome toy to grind ratio?

Titan Quest. You just have to pretend that its an MMOPG and that you're pissed of with your guild and ignoring them.

That's just semantics though The main point is, again, that whether of Korean or Western origin, diku-inspired games are fertile ground for RMTing because of the imbalances based on time. I only use you as one example, but you've quit games that have had comparatively awesome time-to-toy ratios. Whether it's 1 hour between toys or 10 hours, it's not instant, and therefore not enough for some people. We're simply importing a business model that SOE hasn't been able to make successful enough that other Western developer/publishers have been compelled to emulate it

24/7 Persistent world > Self-directed investment > Time-Inbalance > Farming > Twinking > Powerleveling > RMT.

Seperate tangent, DQ.  The RMT versus Grind is one thing.  The Toys:Grind ratio was me talking about why I'd probably not play ArchLord regardless of the presense of RMT. 

Geeze man, can't you keep track of failed hijackings of one thread on a message board out of the 50 sources you read each day? ;)

Nuh uh, you don't get off that easily for taking a quote out of context :)

proposal:  pay for play; and limit the 24/7 access -- who really needs to play more than 8hrs a day?  Make them pay more.  And don't let anyone play 24hrs since those are just bots and people switching toons.

I think the ratio between those who pay-to-play and those who pay a flat monthly-fee will likely be the same it was back in the MUD days. That's good for a focused game catering to a very specific target audience, but not for a company hoping to cast a wider net.

If anyone is interested, the NDA for Archlord has been lifted.

Source:  http://community.codemasters.com/forum/showthread.php?t=126829

I received a beta invite and actually downloaded it, but never logged in.  I was too a-scared.

...Do not tempt me.

Planetside.  Not only are your toys/skills basically free, but as you gain more points you can switch some of your toys/skills around.

I would also claim that Chromehounds has the same effect, but I'm reasonably certain that a lot of people don't consider Chromehounds an MMO.  In Chromehounds, you can get new equipment after every single fight.


What's interesting about these two games, in terms of RMT, is how VASTLY different they are.

Planetside has zero RMT.  Even most powerlevelling services won't touch PS. 

Chromehounds has RMT through XBox Live Marketplace.  You can buy special weapons, equipment, paint schemes, etc with Points, which cost money.  Those devices can then be used for customization.  Those parts though aren't that common, as each still has disadvantages.