ethical question for MMORPG players

yes this is going to be about gill sellers, platnium sellers, gold sellers or whatever your game uses for ingame currency. A little background about the situation. Yes i know that money buying/selling is illegal, but i still almost did it back in january. My little brother used to play FFXI with me and was having a very hard time keeping up with the equipment demands of his job/level, so i was gonna buy some for him for his birthday. I had looked around online at various sites and the cheepest prices i found were jsut under $40 US for 10mil gill. I went as far as to create an account with the company and put a 10mil stack in my shopping cart. If it wasn't for a very important phone call i would have gone through with the transaction. Well fastforward a few months and i went back to the website to close the account i had opened because they kept sending me emails about all thier 'great' sales. When i logged into my account and was about to cancel it i saw that the order status on that 10mil stack was not canceled as it should have showed, but was actually showing as proccessing. about 6 hours, 3 online chat sessions, and 2 phonecalls to the business itself, boy they were freaked i got thier number since the one they list on the site is out of service, i convinced them that not only did i already pay for the gil, but that it had never been delivered. I just scammed them out of 10mil gill, which also happens to have raised in price from the 40ish bucks in Jan to almost $150!! If you guys were in the same situation, would you keep and use the gil, distribute it among friends and/or random people, or just get rid of it. I honestly and stuck on this little quandry, and am looking forward to my fellow gamer's input as well as anyone else who reads this.

OK mate, we all answer to God, however we happen to spell the name................?

If people will cheat, then they deserve what they get..................

"He who lives by the sword, shall also perish by the sword"

And I did love it when that useless scamming auto insurance company paid me out twice...........that came to just about what they really owed................£$%^&* the begrudgers is what I say :D

2 wrongs don't make a right?

Debs~

They do if you can get both in before the S.O.B. has even cleared leather..................... :p

My mother had an expression for situations like this.
"It's only a game!"
:cool:

It's unethical as hell, but considering the amount of time you spent on it, I'd say you worked for that virtual cash.

Give 5 million to your brother, keep 2 million for yourself, give 3 million to friends.

Trevoke you disgust me! we are speaking to our mate J~I~ here..................

He gets 10 Mil for $40..................so that is 250, 000 per buck?.................they now cost $150, so that is around 67, 000

Now, his intentions were to give his bro $40? so that makes 40 x 67,000 = 2.68 mil?

He can now sell the remaining 7.3 mil for sufficient funds to buy both of us a beer?

:drink:

NOW!..................whether the $40 actually transferred is the responsibility of the US banking system...........?

Reasonable intent has been demonstrated and a contract exists...............

J~I~......................life is more difficult now..............just leave the "kit" in a luggage locker at Chicago Central?

;)

"The Enforcer"

Last night i decided to sed the money back into the online comunity :D I bought a whole bunch of really expensive items with it and started giving it all away to random low lvl people in town. I feel like Robbin Hood . . . if Robin Hood was a drunk, paranoid, obsessively compulsive Jew.

nihil, I was raised dumbly honest and hadn't thought of the prospect of a beer. Good point though.
Still, selling is almost as bad as buying.

JI : good deal. You're making a rep for yourself, too.

Well, I hope that you have already made up your mind. I don't feel that the morals or opinions of others should influence your decision. You already know what you want to do.

A bank ATM spits out an extra $150 when you only wanted $100. What would you do?

I know that the ATM scenerio is a bit of a stretch...
I used to play World of Warcraft a good bit. I knew plenty of people that would stand around and wait for Gold farmers to sell their really good gear to people of the same faction. When they did this, they would wait until the person opened up a trade window with the item that they were about to receive came up and then they would reduce the amount of gold that they were giving them...hopefully with the other person not noticing.

The type of gameplay that these gold farmers used, ruin the game for some people. The farmers would purposly try to get the other people killed in the game in order to aquire more targets in the area to raise their level of production. The games economy would also rise to levels that were out of control. These farmers would sell items for crazy amounts of gold because they knew how easy it was for people to buy gold online (which ... btw buy gold from these same exact gold farmers. This drives a lot of people away from actually playing the game and the level of interest in playing the game. These people are making real money from people trying to play a game anyway you look at it.

Your situation is a little ironic towards them. And if you are worried about the actual game company finding out.....Well, you NEVER bought the currency....it was given to you. They can backtrack and never find a transaction of real money from your account.

In all honesty thuogh, I would delete your character and play outside in the sun

Digoy: Your right i did know what i was going to do already, i guess i was just more interested in seeing if my morals/ethics somewhat in line with others i respect, the AO community. And in all honesty with the atm scenario as long as that extra $50 wasn't debited out of my account i would pocket it. I have very little respect for large companies who clearly only care about money and not the consumer.

Rcgreen: what i do get a bit tired of, however, is people always using that 'its just a game' line. Well yeah it is. But so are sports. I have yet to meet someone that uses that line on me trying to convince me that i waste my time on games that doesn't do the exact same thing with a sport, wether it be american football, football, baseball, rugby, cricket . . you get the idea. games are an essential part of life in my opinion, as long as they are played/watched with other as a social event. yesterday's stick ball is now todays mmorpg. tomorrow? who knows im just trying to get through today :3pow: :duh:

People pay money to play online games.... Oh dear.... Oh dear, dear me.... :rolleyes:

TS: is it really any different than paying to go see a sporting event?

Yep.. It is... I'm paying to watch the best of the best compete at the highest level... as opposed to paying to play a computer game of which there are millions that you don't need to pay a penny to play once you have bought the software... Don't get me wrong, I like computer games... But I wouldn't be interested in a game where I have to keep paying to play it.

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I'm paying to watch the best of the best compete at the highest level

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so you only pay to see the championship games then??

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there are millions that you don't need to pay a penny to play

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as there are millions, well many, different sports which include the 'best of the best' of that sport which you can watch for free.

I only watch Football... So yes... We are talking about the highest level...

What sports can I watch, see the best of the best in that sport and not pay for it... I'd love to know...

No ****, you can play Day of Defeat all day long for nada. Or BattleField X or Team Fortress or Baldaur's Gate or Sacred or Never Winter Nights or x 10^23

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What sports can I watch, see the best of the best in that sport and not pay for it... I'd love to know...

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Well im going to consider the fee you pay for the tele service as the same as the fee i pay for internet access. With this we get pay per view or subscription channels as the same thing as the games that cost money to play online. That being said, well all of them? Here in the states you can watch almost any sport that we televise without paying for a subscription channel or a pay per view. To name a few, i'm assuming you are reffering to "soccer" when you talk about football, american football, if you guys over there even watch that crap, baseball, basketball and other mainstream sports. correct me if i am wrong but isn't football either played in the olympics or has its own "world champion" type thing where its the best teams from each participating countries?

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No ****, you can play Day of Defeat all day long for nada. Or BattleField X or Team Fortress or Baldaur's Gate or Sacred or Never Winter Nights or x 10^23

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I'm not saying these games aren't good or worth playing, i have spent many a hours on the baulder's gate series, but what i see my self paying for in FF is the service and the "name brand" so to speak. Been addicted to the FF series for a pretty long time. It would be like me watching baseball all my life on tv, then one year they decide to start showing 'dream team' baseball games on pay per view and i pay to watch that because i love baseball so much and its something new and better than previous versions of the game.

Nope... Football is Football... Soccer is Soccer...

The NFL is the best of the best... Thus, on the rare occasions I do go to the game, I'm happy to pay for it... If I do watch Soccer and pay I pay for international matches... again.. the best each country has to offer...

I don't watch any of the other American Sports... not even on TV...

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The NFL is the best of the best... Thus, on the rare occasions I do go to the game, I'm happy to pay for it

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so you pay to go to a game that you can watch for free, minus tv service costs, from home or the nearest friendly pub?

Yes... I do... Because of _who_ is playing... I've been to Lions games because Barry Sanders is playing... I've been to Packers games because Brett Favre is playing... I've been to Giants games because LT was playing... I've been to a Raiders games because Gerry Rice/Tim Brown was playing... etc. etc. etc...

I go to see a specific team or a specific player... and it is a lot different to watching it on TV... I do that _every_ week of the football season... In the pub :D

You feel the services are worth the money, I don't. No big deal. You probably wouldn't pay for Sat radio, I do. I friggin love Sat radio. I like playing the xbox but wouldn't pay for the connection to "live" for the same reasons I wouldn't pay to play an online game. It's all relative but you cannot say a trip to an arena with the beer, the commraderie the wind and the sounds are the same as playing an online game. Although the pleasure from either may be the same.

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Brett Favre

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lol, my sweety loves that dude.
:D

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but you cannot say a trip to an arena with the beer, the commraderie the wind and the sounds are the same as playing an online game

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your right i can't

but i can say that the difference between watching a game and bieng there in person is very similar to the difference between playing a single player video game vs the mmorpg and the vast number of people you interact with from all over the world. in both cases we are paying for the added "fun"

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the vast number of people you interact with from all over the world. in both cases we are paying for the added "fun"

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Hmmm.... I used to play Counterstrike _constantly_... I interacted with people from all over the world... I still chat from time to time with a chap from Norway who called himself Tor... I never paid a penny after buying the origonal software... Which takes us back to the origin of our discussion... Why do people pay to play a computer game online? ;)

If FF online was free i wouldn't have to pay. I gues it boils down to the fact that i can say that FF is my favorite series, and except a couple of the games with every release they get better and better. Its sorta like cable tv i guess. Im more than satisfied with my basic local channels not needing any service provider, yet feel the money for the game is worth it.

Like no only does it create a unfair advantage with wealther players as they can pick up better gear. But it can also create a very large rise in inflation on the server ecomony as the Gold Pieces / Zeny / Credits / what ever is not worth as much as it use to be.
I remember this being a very big problem with Star Wars Galaxies a few years back. And with in about 6 months we did see prices nearly triple on items and services.

What players do not realise is that transactions do carry and audit trail with your player log file. So if the devs feel that the problem is getting out of control, they can start pin pointing who the farmers are.
The other thing that i do like about WOW is that a lot of the higher level items are soul bond to the player when they use them or pick them up. This ensure that the item as a one use only.

Blizzard as learnt from a lot of other mistakes that other MMORPG have made. About the only thing that they can not 100% control is farming.

Ok, coming to this discussion late because most of my online time today was spent playing WoW (and fighting their server issues this evening I might add. grr.)

The prime reason I quit mudding on Realms of Despair was because I knew many, many players who had 'the best equipment real money could buy'. I heartily oppose the buying and selling of game equipment, money, or characters. I oppose it because it makes a game severely unbalanced, destroying both game economy and the fun of earning the bloody stuff for yourself.

I believe that if you cannot figure out how to get an item, or the game-money to pay for an item in the game then you shouldn't have that item. How fair is it to the countless thousands of us who spend hour after hour of our time trying to earn that ever elusive uberbuff piece of equipment that we've chased like a carrot placed before a mule when one need only look it up on ebay and pay out 40 bucks for it?

IMHO people who pay for game equipment or money are foolish. They're destroying the fun they should be having in the game - much like using cheats to beat something. If they pay rl money to play the game in the first place, shouldn't they actually PLAY instead of just buying everything they want? c'mon. RL time issues? Why did this person subscribe to the game in the first place if they knew they didn't have time to play it? Was the price of the subscription broken down to hour by hour for their actual time really worth it? Are they actually going to get to enjoy the equipment/money you've purchased for them? And you scammed the seller to boot? Yeesh. You both should be shot. Were I an admin of a game I'd ban both buyers and sellers on the spot, with no chance at ever returning to the game.

Or, to quoth an old friend of mine who's used for just that purpose,

Balzhur screams, "Buyerdude, your arse is MINE!"

Nuff said.

[edit just for TS] Bro, I pay to play simply because the necessity to pay limits the number if moronic idiots online there who are there simply to annoy. We still get them, but they're VASTLY lower in number. So far I've found only a very few who were mere annoyances, and a great number of serious players - both mkillers and pvp, as well as some solid roleplay. These players greatly enhance the (already incredible) game and make it extremely enjoyable. I can see how one could become so addicted as to spend their life playing such a game - it's a fight not to :P Will I continue to pay for my play? You betcha, right up to the point where I decide the value of the relaxation and enjoyment I receive from playing it is less than the money I pay.[/edit]

Black:

I knew there was a reason I like you... It's just so hard to find... <LOL>

I know what you mean... I played CS constantly until I moved... Then I had better things to do... Now I haven't been back in 10 months... I'm sure I will at some point... But the entertainment value isn't there right now for me to reinvest the time to get back to the level I was at....

Tiger.... So you pay because they are "professionals"? Like ordering a prostitute would be OK because she's a pro at what she's doing? If I'm going to pay for someone to play with balls they damn well better be mine. ;)

The other alternative is to find a place where there are no morons, like the Discworld MUD ;-)

Or, in the case of MMOs, make the really good stuff NODROP.

I love the MMORPG part of it and i LOVE FF in general but i wont pay another dime to them. My friend/partner that i played w/ in FF11 used to pay real money for game money and it ****ed me off cause he had all the latest gear but then again he also saved my *** alot too. I just stopped paying for it cause on dial up the experience isnt really that great.

[stands up]

Hi, my name is Evil Moo, and I haven't played a video game at length or with any consistency/frequency in 3 years.

I'm an ex-gamer, and I used to have a problem. Now I'm free and living life, exploiting my youth to its fullest potential.

Thank you.

[/Stands up]

Trevoke: *cough* hate to tell ya, but nodrop flag is changable - rem curse. (I built for Smaug muds for years.)

[applause]Evilmoo[/applause] Too many of us have difficulty breaking those chains. In leaving the Muds I broke a 10 year addiction. Thankfully although WoW is highly addictive to me as well, I spend only a few hours per week actually playing it. Real Life is a rockin thing sometimes.

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I'm an ex-gamer, and I used to have a problem. Now I'm free and living life, exploiting my youth to its fullest potential.

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lol me too. I still play but it's RARE and only for a short time. No more waking up in my 2 day old sweaty ass underwear asleep at the keyboard with beer cans all over. I was a "leet" team fortress player with my own games servers and admin on a few commercial servers and forums. :D I never spent a dime on my 30 hour binges. ;)

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I'm an ex-gamer, and I used to have a problem. Now I'm free and living life, exploiting my youth to its fullest potential.

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lol me too. I still play but it's RARE and only for a short time. No more waking up in my 2 day old sweaty ass underwear asleep at the keyboard with beer cans all over. I was a "leet" team fortress player with my own games servers and admin on a few commercial servers and forums. :D I never spent a dime on my 30 hour binges. ;)

There's an echo....

If you have the money, by all means, go for it. On diablo 2 LOD, it is impossible to find some of the items I want and I do not have the time nor patience to look for them. I'd rather pay for what I want and have it now, rather than spending pointless hours looking for these items I'll never find.