as if /pizza was bad enough.....check this out

[Alya Mizar (Tsybil)]

My take on this subject:

I am a hard core RPer. A big atraction for me is living a life. I want it to be like living a life, therefore, for me, Real Money Transfers would spoil my fun. Then again, powerleveling kind of spoils my fun too. I want to experience it all.

BUT

I do have problems with the way people are using the words "cheating" and "morals" here.

If I engage in RMTs I would be cheating myself, but I do not think those who do are cheating. Sure they blaze past me in levels, but so does most everyone. Is a powergamer cheating? They stick within the game as much as I do, but their playing philosophy allows them to do things I just don't. These things are not cheating, just not how I play. It does sadden me when I see a Red ? doing 30+ level synthing but I don't get jealous.

Morals. Now there is a much misused word. Look at the so called "Moral Majority" and those wonderfuly moral "Right to Life" types who are against abortion and Physisian Assisted Suicide but for the War and the Death Penalty. I will not ever use a skillup bot, I want it all, even the boring parts, but this does not make those who do immoral.

Are people who run casinos immoral? How about if they live in a state where gambling is illegal? Those who have an "accidental DC" when they loose ARE immoral and cheaters.

How about whores? Are they immoral? RL whores in most European countries are plying an honest and legalized trade. A number of my friends have worked as phone whores, doing phone sex for cash. This is legal, is it immoral? Apperantly whoring in FF is against something or another, and people have been baned for it, but is it immoral? Maybe it is immoral for us who live in the puritan USA but not for the Dutch?

What I think SoE is trying to do is seperate players with different playing pholosiphies. Those who are RPers already have their own servers, why not segragate those who do RMTs as well?

Will it work? Will they get the Gil farmers and buyers to leave the rest of the servers alone? No idea at all. BUT, if they carefuly alter their EULA they have a powerful tool to use against the IGE sorts, the Gilfarmers and account brokers will make more profit (not more money, just a higher percentage), and perhaps there will be fewer abusses on the other servers.

If it works, everyone will be happier. I wish them luck with the experment. If they charge a small brokerage fee, say 2 - 5%, they will tap a powerful revenue stream and still screw IGE. Hmmmm.... is screwing IGE immoral?....

[Crispleaf]

I considering it cheating if you use methods outside of the confines of the game and its rules in order to gain an advantage.

Powerleveling, while I don't abide by it, is within the confines of the game and within the game rules. There's nothing wrong with being clever.

The Monopoly example is a good one to describe the difference.

If you have Park Place and an opponent has Boardwalk, it's acceptable within of the confines of the game to negotiate a deal to buy Boardwalk using game money and game property. Sure, it bothers the other opponents who don't want to see you gain the most powerful property set, but there's nothing wrong with being clever.

It becomes cheating when you reach into your wallet, pull out a real twenty, and exchange it for more play money or Boardwalk itself. It's cheating because you're using something outside the confines of the game to gain an advantage. Classic Monopoly isn't played with real money.

So a person spending real money to gain items and gil is pretty much doing the same thing. The rules Square-Enix laid out clearly state that it's wrong to do this. That's why I consider it cheating.

Now, if all players at the Monopoly table agree that real money can be used, then it's not cheating anymore. And what Sony is doing with their IGE clone is pretty much the same idea as this. They've now made it acceptable to use real money to gain an advantage, so it's no longer cheating.

However, that's not the way I like to play Monopoly or an MMO. So, I won't participate with anyone who wants to play that way

[Prrsha]

I meant to post this a bit ago, but I have been having pc problems and just now remembered while I was at work.

As to the debate of how many people are for and against concerning the debate prrsha and myself were partaking in. Here are the official numbers.

Here are the results of the polls:

What do you think of Station Exchange?

For It: 33.71%
Neutral: 32.61%
Against It: 33.68%

Do you want to participate in Station Exchange?

Yes: 24.76%
Don't Care: 29.90%
No: 45.34%

So in a nutshell its an almost equal number for and against, with a equal part who simply do not care.

And nearly 25% that will indeed participate. assuming these numbers are all independent people, ( I know many on both camps have multiple accounts hence why I will assume independence ) On a average playerbase of 300k, that is roughly 75,000 people who plan on particpating, realistically without the averages its somewhere between 60,000 and 75,000. Now suffice to say I think it is more then obvious there are not 60k+ sellers out there.

So how does this settle with me? Well to be honest I think its sad, This poll realized what I had been saying, for years and what i had debated several times here recently. While I did realize the inevitable futility of fighting this, hence why I debated it so vehemetly, I was hoping that the mmorpg community was not realisitcally in this bad of condition. I had hoped to see numbers in the 5 - 8% range which is still a large number of players but still significantly smaller. Fortunatlly they are going to get their own servers at this time, however Based on initial numbers I daresay its success is a obvious thing. While I know many other gaming companies are mocking SoE currently, I sincerely doubt that mockery will continue once it becomes obvious how much of a cash cow it is. I likewise can easily assume that the population in EQ2 is no different then any other game, and that while the numbers will fluctuate slightly from game to game they will infact remain inheritly the same.

The most dangerous group to me is the Dont care group, This is the group that can swing either way, but is still unaccounted for. While most will certaintly not participate, I would say at least a percentage will give in to temptation at some point and decide to give it a go. This is unfortunatly one of those times where I sincerely wish I was wrong about my earlier predictions.

Just remember your own argument on how useless internet polls are. I've seen polls with the opposite results but like you said, the proof is in the pudding. Only after Sony implements this new feature would you see how many players ditch EQ2 for another game.

[Ephi]

the way i see it...
everything in FFXI we rent... not own... we pay a monthy fee...
therefore if we rent we do not have the right to sell the stuff a character may have obtained because its not ours to sell... our very characters, although we do own them in the sense that we created them and that we play as these characters, and everything the characters hold are still property of SE

therefore when 1 obtains gil, the character is allowed to use it however the player chooses because its still within the boundaries of SE's property lines, however the player cannot use the gil however he/she chooses because the gil does not belong to the player but to the character which is under SE's property.

i hope that makes sense

[angeladark]

Now, here's my two gil about things like this. Gilselling, goldselling, or whatever has been a part of the online gaming scene for a long time. If people want to go against their EULA and do something that the game makers specifically say players shouldn't do then as I heard someone from G4TV on 'Attack of the Show' say: They are only ruining the game for themselves. Personally, it is my hope that they are caught and have their accounts cancelled and their ISPs notified of their activity. Basically it would be pretty much the same as buying something on the black market. Granted, it's nothing as lethal or dangerous as guns, drugs or chemicals and the like, but is it detremental to gaming as a whole. Albert Einstien once said "There are two things that are infinite, one is human stupidity, the other is the universe, although I'm not quite sure about the latter" So, chalk it up to not reading EULAs and the like. I've seen people on Ebay trying to sell their used copies of FFXI after figuring out that they needed a credit card to play, even though it is written on the box that one is required for play. Also, it is written that once opened it is not valid for purchase and not for resale by a prior owner. Though I guess the same people who don't see those types of things are the same that need warnings on products telling them not to use their hair dryer while sleeping or while in the shower.

All in all, the courts have helped push the online selling of virtual merchendise which has regrettably produced a ton of fraudulent transactions and have helped a lot of morally corrupt people become very rich. Anyway, I'll get off my soap box now.

[Tivia]

Just remember your own argument on how useless internet polls are. I've seen polls with the opposite results but like you said, the proof is in the pudding. Only after Sony implements this new feature would you see how many players ditch EQ2 for another game.

Very true, however there is a slight difference in a random internet poll and an ingame poll responded too only by people who actually play the game.

But again you are correct, we will see how many infact will participate, when and only when the server goes live.

[xaresity]

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[xaresity]

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