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Topic: EQBay Opens, Pre-Launch Testing Numbers Announced (Read 11776 times)
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HaemishM
Staff Emeritus
Posts: 42666
the Confederate flag underneath the stone in my class ring
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Furiously
Terracotta Army
Posts: 7199
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I can't wait until the first incident where a GM makes people in a zone teleport out and has a friend ninja the phats off a dragon to sell.
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SuperPopTart
Terracotta Army
Posts: 990
I am damn cute for a stubby shortling.
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Wouldn't be that far removed from what the EQ GM's already do.
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I am Super, I am a Pop Tart.
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Sky
Terracotta Army
Posts: 32117
I love my TV an' hug my TV an' call it 'George'.
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I think it's stupid and bad for gameplay and design, but hey. If people are going to pay for it, they're going to do it.
I won't be involved with anything like that, ever. I'm not into profit whoring, I'd rather the game didn't suck so bad I was driven to pay for things I'd normally get by playing the game. That's my inner voice saying "Hey man, this game sucks, play something else." I find it odd some people's inner voice tells them to spend real dollars instead.
I wish I had that kind of disposable income, to buy make-believe.
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HaemishM
Staff Emeritus
Posts: 42666
the Confederate flag underneath the stone in my class ring
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The only defense for SOE I can give is that at least they were smart enough to put these people all on separate servers.
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SuperPopTart
Terracotta Army
Posts: 990
I am damn cute for a stubby shortling.
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Yes but if this works and is deemed a success.. how long do you think it will be before it will be implimented at least on some level to the main servers:
I.E. somehow you can do a character or item transfer to this server for an additional "fee" imposed by the douchebags at SOE.
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I am Super, I am a Pop Tart.
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Murgos
Terracotta Army
Posts: 7474
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Even better, you pay to transfer your char over to a real money enabled server, stock up, and then pay to transfer back.
It's all about the money hats.
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"You have all recieved youre last warning. I am in the process of currently tracking all of youre ips and pinging your home adressess. you should not have commencemed a war with me" - Aaron Rayburn
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Toast
Terracotta Army
Posts: 549
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The secondary market does exist. It is widespread and common among every play server in every game that has any correlation between time and persistent in-game wealth.
It's a good thing for players, and SOE should be applauded for acknowledging the obvious.
This could be dangerous legally though...
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A good idea is a good idea forever.
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Pococurante
Terracotta Army
Posts: 2060
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Is there a reason why you guys don't post links to the original story? No whining just curious if there's some sort of /.-counter courtesy I don't know about.
Oh, and I think the idea is great. I wish Blizzard had something like this. For whatever reason three of our peer group just decided to join WoW and it's a PITA power-leveling up to our level since we're all casuals...
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HaemishM
Staff Emeritus
Posts: 42666
the Confederate flag underneath the stone in my class ring
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We like to keep your traffic here. Also, I got this story from a mailing list, not a site I can link to.
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schild
Administrator
Posts: 60350
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Is there a reason why you guys don't post links to the original story? No whining just curious if there's some sort of /.-counter courtesy I don't know about. I don't post many links simply because I like visiting the least number of websites a day as possible. I think I average about 7 right now. This story also came from teh EQ2 mailing list.On topic: If every company did this, IGE would still exist and just lower their prices. They are simply more efficient than anyone else will ever be. edit: Haem responded before me.
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Krakrok
Terracotta Army
Posts: 2190
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I wish I had that kind of disposable income, to buy make-believe.
Ever payed to view a movie in a theater?
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SuperPopTart
Terracotta Army
Posts: 990
I am damn cute for a stubby shortling.
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It's a good thing for players, and SOE should be applauded for acknowledging the obvious.
This could be dangerous legally though...
You should be hung to dry somewhere cold and with lots of m,eat in it.
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I am Super, I am a Pop Tart.
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Merusk
Terracotta Army
Posts: 27449
Badge Whore
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Oh, and I think the idea is great. I wish Blizzard had something like this. For whatever reason three of our peer group just decided to join WoW and it's a PITA power-leveling up to our level since we're all casuals...
.. Err, this service still wouldn't help you. It's for item transfers, not buying character levels. UO is the only service to-date that has offered a 'buy a pre-leveled character' package.
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The past cannot be changed. The future is yet within your power.
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Sky
Terracotta Army
Posts: 32117
I love my TV an' hug my TV an' call it 'George'.
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Ever payed to view a movie in a theater?
Sure. But I didn't pay to view the movie, and then pay for a make-believe box of popcorn and soda to go with it. The monthly mmog fee is the movie admission, I'm cool with that. Just not the make-believe popcorn.
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Toast
Terracotta Army
Posts: 549
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Hypocrites.
You are spending something quite valuable to acquire a make-believe good every time you "grind" for cash, run an ingame business, or raid a monster for items. You are spending your time. Time is valuable and scarce, so get off your high horse about being too good to waste money on pixels.
It's not the database entry called "Gold_Count#"=100 that the secondary people are buying. It's the ten hours of time that it would have taken to acquire that 100 gold. In the real world, that's called buying a service. Pretty complicated stuff here.
Whether it's right or wrong, if it cheapens your "accomplishments", or if gold farmers ruin games, are questions for another discussion.
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A good idea is a good idea forever.
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stray
Terracotta Army
Posts: 16818
has an iMac.
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I don't even like wasting my "time". Hence, why I've been staying away from MMO's. About the only thing I'll waste time on is fun (EDIT: And err....F13  ).....Which these games do not have.
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Toast
Terracotta Army
Posts: 549
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I'm done with MMOs as well for the same reason.
If large swaths of gameplay are so onerous that people gladly go to work to earn money to pay into the secondary market, then something is very broken in the genre.
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A good idea is a good idea forever.
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Xanthippe
Terracotta Army
Posts: 4779
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I think this is a good thing. But then, I'm all in favor of giving people what they say they want. If folks want to spend their money on this, it's fine with me. I'm not likely to play on such a server but I don't care if others do.
I don't think this will create a new market or bleed over into other games or affect me in any way. I think it's a specialty niche market and likely to stay that way.
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Trippy
Administrator
Posts: 23657
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They left out the most important number which is how much money SOE made during the trial. Making a crude estimate from the numbers they announced I'm estimating they were making an average of $7 per person per month (though the trial was only two weeks):
$14 per person per two weeks * 2 (for an approx month) * (0.10 SOE transaction fee) + (4 items per person per month * $1 listing fee per item) = ~$7 per person per month
If this auction stuff really takes off they could conceivably eliminate the monthly fee from the Station Exchange-enable servers. Wait this is Sony we're talking about, never mind, but if it wasn't Sony that would be an interesting model for MMOGs (some games are already doing this but on a much smaller scale and not with player traded items) -- the people with a lot of disposable income would in effect be subsidizing the playing costs for the rest of the population.
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Margalis
Terracotta Army
Posts: 12335
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I'm with Toast on this one. I've owned Res Evil: Outbreak 2 since the week it came out and I still haven't beaten all the scenarios yet. Time isn't money, it's MORE valuable than money. There really is no difference between farming for 10 hours and working at McDs for ten hours and using that money to buy EQ money. Opportunity cost and all that.
I think the problem here is that MMORPGs tend to be a very passive-aggressive form of psuedo-competition. They aren't real competition in the sense of a skill based game like a fighting game, FPS, tennis or whatever. But people feel the need to do better than their neighbors, and see buying stuff as a way of circumventing whatever advantage they've accrued via time spent.
When parts of the game aren't fun, some people choose to pay to skip, others just don't play. I think both are valid.
I have the same problem where games have unlockable content that actually matters. Fuck if I want to replay a game 50 times to unlock something I wanted from the beginning.
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vampirehipi23: I would enjoy a book written by a monkey and turned into a movie rather than this.
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Hoax
Terracotta Army
Posts: 8110
l33t kiddie
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I think you hit the nail on the head Margalis and that is why you see such a strong reaction against IGE and this stupid SOE needs cash plan. Because the pvp in all MMG's currently involves about as much player skill as all those times when we were kids we used to have 3 people playing whack-a-mole (or crocodile) at once to get tickets. The psuedo-competition of having phat lewts, higher level character, cooler looking gear, and a bigger e-peen is the only thing a great deal of the population cares about. So when somebody can slap down real cash and pay for the win it pisses people off.
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A nation consists of its laws. A nation does not consist of its situation at a given time. If an individual's morals are situational, then that individual is without morals. If a nation's laws are situational, that nation has no laws, and soon isn't a nation. -William Gibson
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Mesozoic
Terracotta Army
Posts: 1359
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I'm done with MMOs as well for the same reason.
If large swaths of gameplay are so onerous that people gladly go to work to earn money to pay into the secondary market, then something is very broken in the genre.
People don't necessarily pay money to "get past" it. The game demands that players level, and the players are trying to oblige. The games themselves practically taunt the player to get as high in level as possible as fast as possible. Every time uber_elf_001 runs past you with a full suit of gleaming plate mail and a glowing two-handed sword that drips fire - while you stand there in leather scraps swinging a rusty mace - the game is basically laughing at you. People think that the fun starts at the next level, no matter what level they are. And they will cheat, exploit, and even buy their way to that level, even if the very next quest would have been a fantastic experience.
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...any religion that rejects coffee worships a false god. -Numtini
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HaemishM
Staff Emeritus
Posts: 42666
the Confederate flag underneath the stone in my class ring
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There are actually 2 fundamental problems with buying in-game cash or gear.
1) You are paying someone money to NOT PLAY THE GAME, or in essence, you are paying someone to play the game for you.
2) The real problem is that THE GAME is really about nothing more than acquiring these shiny baubles of bullshit, and the actual process of acquiring them is boring as fucking dirt. The process of acquiring them is supposed to be the game play itself, but that game play is so mindnumbingly, drool-inducingly boring, that skipping the process is preferable.
The first problem is one of perspective; it's like paying some kid to play baseball for you, then accepting the MVP trophy he wins. Yes, these games are player vs. player competitions, whether or not any player-killing goes on, but they are also competitions against the environment of the game, the game's world. By paying money to acquire these things, you are pressing the "I Win" button on all of those things. You are Barry Bonds on roids.
The second problem is the bigger problem, that of really shitty, lazy game design, and makes the first problem worse because it highlights just how sad some people are, who will pay money for the e-peen instead of just not playing a game that sucks ass.
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Sky
Terracotta Army
Posts: 32117
I love my TV an' hug my TV an' call it 'George'.
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I always like it when Hammy saves me the trouble of responding. What he said. Damn you for being succinct in a way I only wish I could be.
I blame the years on the road and LSD.
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Dren
Terracotta Army
Posts: 2419
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I'm of the same camp that time is more valuable than money, but it goes beyond that. When I pay for items/characters/etc I'm giving you time that I spent at my job in addition to the time I spend in my freetime. In essence, I'm now spending ALL of my time on your damn game because you are too lazy to create a good game design!
My reason for not wanting others to have an opportunity to pay for content? Basically because that will become the norm and developers will rely on it overtime. It will just be expected that you have to shell out more dough for the really nice stuff that make these games any fun to begin with. We are already seeing the result of this new content-for-cash mentality and I resist it.
RESIST IT I SAY!
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Pococurante
Terracotta Army
Posts: 2060
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The first problem is one of perspective; it's like paying some kid to play baseball for you, then accepting the MVP trophy he wins. What a big beautiful world we live in where people can co-exist with such different viewpoints. See I view it more as I can buy my baseball bat or make my own. I can rent time in a batting cage or wait for the next game to roll around to "practice". I can hire a personal trainer or just repeat the same dumb moves until epiphany strikes. I can borrow money and buy a house or build it myself. Ad nauseum.
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Mesozoic
Terracotta Army
Posts: 1359
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Leisure time is not money. Leisure time costs money. Time only = money if you otherwise would have spent that time earning money.
Now who here works a full shift, goes home, and then tries to decide whether to
1) play a game for two hours, or 2) run over to Wendy's for two hours, earning a grand total of $8.24 after taxes for picking fingers out of chili.
Then, of course, going home, going to bed, and working another day shift.
STFU about the value of your time spent looting orc corpses in Popular Franchise Online.
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« Last Edit: July 22, 2005, 10:14:44 AM by Mesozoic »
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...any religion that rejects coffee worships a false god. -Numtini
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WayAbvPar
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Is there any sort of incentive bonus for each finger found? It might be worth it if they gave 1% of the average lawsuit damage you helped them avoid.
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When speaking of the MMOG industry, the glass may be half full, but it's full of urine. HaemishM
Always wear clean underwear because you never know when a Tory Government is going to fuck you.- Ironwood
Libertarians make fun of everyone because they can't see beyond the event horizons of their own assholes Surlyboi
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tazelbain
Terracotta Army
Posts: 6603
tazelbain
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Ya, but then you'd get people putting fingers in the chili on purpose... Oh, wait!
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"Me am play gods"
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Murgos
Terracotta Army
Posts: 7474
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Leisure time is not money. Leisure time costs money. Time only = money if you otherwise would have spent that time earning money.
Now who here works a full shift, goes home, and then tries to decide whether to
1) play a game for two hours, or 2) run over to Wendy's for two hours, earning a grand total of $8.24 after taxes for picking fingers out of chili.
Then, of course, going home, going to bed, and working another day shift.
STFU about the value of your time spent looting orc corpses in Popular Franchise Online.
I generally work a full shift and then attempt to do something at least marginally self-improving, excersize, reading something vaguely intellectual ( Perfectly Reasonable Deviations From The Beaten Track: The Letters Of Richard P. Feynman atm), a portion of a long-term project, or hang with friends. The last thing I look to do, and even then only when I am really just too beat to do anything else, is log on to whatever MMOG I'm subscribed too (currently CoH, which I am paying for and haven't played in over a month). So, yes, whenever I log into a MMOG I feel like I'm losing out on something. I like the games but there is almost always something more constructive I can be doing.
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"You have all recieved youre last warning. I am in the process of currently tracking all of youre ips and pinging your home adressess. you should not have commencemed a war with me" - Aaron Rayburn
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Mesozoic
Terracotta Army
Posts: 1359
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So, yes, whenever I log into a MMOG I feel like I'm losing out on something. I like the games but there is almost always something more constructive I can be doing. However we might feel, we've decided to spend that time at a leisure activity. Just by doing it we more or less acknowledge that we've got nothing better going on. ("...even then only when I am really just too beat to do anything else...") If we're going to try to assign monetary value to units of time, we're going to have to justify some opportunity cost. In truth I think we all gain something through playing, whether its social interaction, stress relief, or some deluded feeling of accoomplishment. If we didn't, we wouldn't do it. The idea that - yeah, I'm killing a dragon tonight, but I could have gone back to work and billed at a $75 an hour, or whatever...its silly.
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« Last Edit: July 22, 2005, 11:01:22 AM by Mesozoic »
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...any religion that rejects coffee worships a false god. -Numtini
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Sky
Terracotta Army
Posts: 32117
I love my TV an' hug my TV an' call it 'George'.
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I really am bad at writing out my thoughts...I guess what I'm trying to say is that I feel mmogs literally waste time. I go into the frenzied ghoul's chamber in guk and spend a half-hour per spawn hoping he will even show up. Then, when the random rare spawn appears, I get to pray that the random rare fbss drops. By buying the item outright, I feel I validate that type of game design.
I'd rather actually play the game and get the item. If I can't, I move on to the next game.
It's not so much that I care about player to player transactions (I'm libertarian, do what you want so long as it doesn't negatively affect me), but it could become a slippery slope with sales coming straight from SOE, and when there is a profit involved, there is no incentive to enact better game design, indeed, the motive would be to make things harder to get ingame so you buy them direct.
That's not exactly my thoughts, but kinda close, I guess.
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tazelbain
Terracotta Army
Posts: 6603
tazelbain
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There is another aspect to this, I don't want to play games with people who have a profit motive. This is just going encourage more people to do just that. I like the example of people wanting to be in every roll for loot because, even if their char can't use it, they can sell it. "Need before Greed" is dead in a game where greed is openly exalted as the best way to get ahead quick.
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"Me am play gods"
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Merusk
Terracotta Army
Posts: 27449
Badge Whore
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I generally work a full shift and then attempt to do something at least marginally self-improving, excersize, reading something vaguely intellectual ( Perfectly Reasonable Deviations From The Beaten Track: The Letters Of Richard P. Feynman atm), a portion of a long-term project, or hang with friends. The last thing I look to do, and even then only when I am really just too beat to do anything else, is log on to whatever MMOG I'm subscribed too (currently CoH, which I am paying for and haven't played in over a month). So, yes, whenever I log into a MMOG I feel like I'm losing out on something. I like the games but there is almost always something more constructive I can be doing. Your problem is with games in general, then, and not with the structure of MMOs. You don't see them as an effective use of your time and through that lens see buying in-game stuff as a way of reducing or removing that ineffective portion of your off-work time. The point of modern games is to waste time and entertain you. That's it. They're not there to teach or to help you to improve yourself or do anything constructive. The same as TV or drinking until you can't remember your name.
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The past cannot be changed. The future is yet within your power.
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