Oh another thing, every player that bought their level should have some flag or marker to indicate that they did, so the real players can ridicule them.

The problem is that if an MMORPG company officially allowed the sale and resale of characters, they would acknowledge that a character has a real value. This opens the door for lawsuits claiming compensation or damages in case of server outage, people banned for cheating, or against other players when their character gets killed in a PvP and loses 10% xp.

quote:Original post by Kylotan
I''ve never played a game like this, nor do I think I''d want to. But they do work. Achaea is one such game, although it is text-based, not graphical. See the items they currently sell at http://www.achaea.com/creditsalt.htm. Note that the prices seem quite steep, but they do make a profit there. It seems that enough players enjoy this to make it viable.

Some friends and I once discussed a similar system. We thought that items and equipment for a MMO game might be purchased with real world money. These funds would then be used instead of any subscription charge to the game. This would give some players the chance to play the came without the continuing cost of a subscription to the game. While other players would spend money on the game to purchase better equipment, furthering their progress through the game and covering the running costs of the servers, etc.

I imagine we decided that items would have to be purchasable with in game currency too, so that players not buying items with real world currency would be able to make progress.

Mostly we thought of problems with security since items would have a real value. Especially with respect to cashing out hacked items

What if a MMORPG offcially allowed purchase of powerful characters and equipment?

already done, at least in regards to equipment. and you can always buy powerful characters on ebay.

https://www.project-entropia.com/news/Index.ajp

Well, buying characters and items for RL cash, and even character sharing totally goes against the whole concept of RPGs, the history of which stretch back about 30 years.

One of the key ideas of online RPGs is the ''persistant world'', that is, the world has a set of rules and must be consistant. Now if a lvl 50 character suddenly turns up out of no-where because some fat business man has a fat wallet then thats some fucking messed up game world. I also dislike character sharing because you never know who you are dealing with and characters are not consistant. Players always use the excuse of ''oh it was my friend who PKed you'', and you get more trouble makers and cheats on shared, inherited or bought characters because the people simply didn''t have to work for them.

If you don''t have time to play a RPG on a level playing field with other people, and the game doesn''t provide enough to keep you interested at lower levels then DON''T PLAY!

Most games I''ve seen forbid character, item trade for RL cash and character sharing. Yes its hard to enforce but there again most rules are. Why is there always a set of people who say ''ohh I havent got time to play and level my character so I bought one or share one because its more fun''. Alot of the time these players are grief players and cheats and at the very least unbalance the game. Yes it may be fun for you for a while, but consider the other people who play the game according to the rules who are also trying to have fun.

Sorry getting a bit O/T there Well as for games that allow it in the rules. All I can say is that you can''t really even consider them MMORPGs in a true sense. In any case, I would never pay to play such a game. Games that have introduced schemes later in their life for buying characters and items are just exploiting players and trying to maximise their profits while stabbing existing subsribers in the back.

quote:Original post by Lab-Rat
Some friends and I once discussed a similar system. We thought that items and equipment for a MMO game might be purchased with real world money. These funds would then be used instead of any subscription charge to the game. This would give some players the chance to play the came without the continuing cost of a subscription to the game. While other players would spend money on the game to purchase better equipment, furthering their progress through the game and covering the running costs of the servers, etc.

I imagine we decided that items would have to be purchasable with in game currency too, so that players not buying items with real world currency would be able to make progress.

I knew there was a reason I keep reading this forum. Every once in a while a great idea comes out of this place. Thanks man