Got RMT?

Okuza · Post by **Okuza** » Fri Dec 08, 2006 8:20 pm

I bet Bismarck RMT owns your RMT. They're everywhere. We're so oppressed. ; ;

Saw this in shout yesterday. Yep -- *after* the big mass bannings. RMT weren't even slowed down much. ><

Tianshii · Post by **Tianshii** » Fri Dec 08, 2006 8:59 pm

wow.. when i see sh*t like that (reminds me of the gambling BS a while ago) /blistadd [name] ahhh, fleeting peace & quiet

Post by **Shirai** » Fri Dec 08, 2006 9:02 pm

Oh man, it's gone that bad on your server? -.-

Sky, Sea and Dynamis -.-

Taskforce please do something.
I feel with you Okuza.

Okuza · Post by **Okuza** » Fri Dec 08, 2006 10:54 pm

Heh, you know what's really odd about the FFXI RMT situation is that the exact same visible behavior existed in EQ. "HNM shells" there would regularly sell off the "no drop" (aka ra/ex) items and no one thought it was at all odd or objectionable. I think the difference there was that in EQ the endshells were known to mostly be selling off the items that no one in their shell wanted.

For example, most older FFXI HNM shells still do Fluffy eventhough almost all the items it drops are not wanted by anyone in the shell. They're only killing it for Ridils and that's it. I don't think anyone would find it weird or objectionable for those shells to sell off BB or Abjuration parts that their membership didn't want. One shell I was in back in EQ even had a reciprocating agreement with a couple other shells -- we'd swap rots on kills.

As EQ declined and older shells died, it came out that a few of those shells were actually RMT-machines. These were "now that I've quit" confessions -- so you don't really know how true they are. They were doing the old content specifically to maintain monopoly and prevent newer shells from infringing on harder farming areas that required the upgrade drops for success. They were selling off the rots for $RL$. Almost all of this was under-the-table activity (before IGE existed). All of them stated they bribed GMs for support, too. Not money -- expensive gifts & wild parties at the fan-cons were how they said they did it.

The fact that it was happening with otherwise what seemed to be totally respected endshells in EQ makes me wonder just how many of the endshells in FFXI are also silently involved in RMT.

Post by **Ambrey** » Fri Dec 08, 2006 10:59 pm

Again, SE is too little, too late. They should have done something about the RMT years ago. As well as updated their game design. There isn't any excuses left, their negligence (sp) has lead to this and lead to many of their long time players quitting as well as a steady decline in their subscribers.

SE you fail.

Okuza · Post by **Okuza** » Sat Dec 09, 2006 4:10 am

I agree with you there Ambrey. I don't think SE will understand or really see the problem until it's long past too late, though. They have somewhat of a stranglehold on the JP MMORPG market -- only one with native JP support that I know of (not that I'm at all attuned to the JP mmorpg market). They're insulated from feedback from outside JP and they have customers that aren't likely to go elsewhere.

FFXI was designed from the ground up to support and encourage RMT. Any game where the most desired (tradable) rewards are obtained from events that occur on the game's schedule rather than the player's schedule will heavily favor RMT. They're the ones that can live in the game. They're the ones that will be present when the game decides it's time for a valuable reward to happen.

If you add in limitted supply on top of game-scheduled sources, you are providing RMT with a way to deny others access to those sources. They can more effectively monopolize and drive up demand for desired rewards.

In SE's defence, however, when FFXI was released, IGE was in it's infancy if it even existed. RMT was just starting to get organized and hostile in EQ -- iirc, they were starting to buy up popular forum web sites to ensure advertising and control (censor) negative press about RMT. It wasn't really even until this year that things got bad in FFXI. A year ago, I XP'd at Ullili and no one was camping it. That was the expected thing at all the sky camps.

So, while I agree wholeheartedly that the entire RMT issue is due purely to direct support by SE in the form of a game system that gives significant advantages to RMT, I also don't think it's reasonable that SE should have forseen this and designed differently. I do think it's reprehensible that they haven't made the few minor changes necessary to prevent the problem now that it's happened, though.

Pretty easy to fix the major ones: 1) instance dynamis, 2) convert all NMs to spawnables similar to Ola rather than random-spawn, 3) make it totally impossible to ever steal a claim or CFH on an NM.

Post by **Karou Ariyen** » Sat Dec 09, 2006 4:18 pm

Hackersflee RMTs that stuff on hades, He made one mistake, he told me he works with an RMT LS after I pretended I was interested in RMT, well chat log confessions dont lie. Hackersflee, enjoy your ban. This cat's using every dirty technique she can to wipe you guys out.

0.001 percent of RMT actually use that money to survive, the rest are preppy college bish's who probobly are just making up for small wing wang size

Post by **Sugami** » Sat Dec 09, 2006 4:59 pm

KarouKaniyashia wrote:0.001 percent of RMT actually use that money to survive, the rest are preppy college bish's who probobly are just making up for small wing wang size

SE is really too stubborn in their ways to make any drastic changes. They like the fact that their game takes over your life too much and changing it will loosen their stranglehold over their patrons.

MittensValefor · Post by **MittensValefor** » Sat Dec 09, 2006 7:19 pm

WoW has servers separated by type: RP, PvP, non-RP, non-PvP, and combinations of those... I wonder what would happen if a "RMT ALLOWED LOLZ" server were set up in FFXI?

Astral Ring Price History:

Dec. 9, 2006 Allyourbase > Seffhiroff 500,000,001
Dec. 9, 2006 Wtfomglol > Limitbrreakerr 480,000,000
Dec. 8, 2006 Chopstixxx > Bigasssword 490,000,000
....

Post by **Ambrey** » Sat Dec 09, 2006 10:20 pm

MittensValefor wrote:WoW has servers separated by type: RP, PvP, non-RP, non-PvP, and combinations of those... I wonder what would happen if a "RMT ALLOWED LOLZ" server were set up in FFXI?

Astral Ring Price History:

Dec. 9, 2006 Allyourbase > Seffhiroff 500,000,001
Dec. 9, 2006 Wtfomglol > Limitbrreakerr 480,000,000
Dec. 8, 2006 Chopstixxx > Bigasssword 490,000,000
....

If you look at the subscriber's graphs and regions that both games cover, you'll still see pretty much this:

FFXI: covers US, JP and parts of EU.

WoW: covers US, EU and obviously the Chinese RMT's..

FFXI: approx. over 500,000 subscribers, maybe less.

WoW: approx. over 7 million subscribers..

What does this say? Someone is obviously doing a better job..

Post by **Alya Mizar (Tsybil)** » Sun Dec 10, 2006 4:07 am

When this game was being designed and written, the RMT problem was unknown. Between the Japanese release and the US release articles started appearing about people who were making a RL living off virtual worlds. Even so, it was not considered a problem at that point.

One reason I got into FFXI was the ToSA which plainly stated that that kind of stuff was not to be tolerated. I just wanted a game where people with deep pockets did not have an advantage.

They looked at problems in other games and devised ways around them. For instance the real estate problems in EQ, solved by Mog Houses. People who were already MMONRPG players before they got into this one can name others I bet.

Vatrina · Post by **Vatrina** » Sun Dec 10, 2006 4:47 am

RMT sucks. But the IRS is worse... http://www.gamespot.com/news/6162654.html

Not sure how many of you, if any, have seen this but it made me a little sick.

As for the actual topic of this thread...when SE designed the game, RMT was unheard of, and certainly wasn't organized like it is now. The problem is, they designed the game to favor RMT, without realizing it. Lots of time invested into one set of NMs just for arguably the best gear in the game; i.e. sky and and land gods. Abjurations are still the most coveted items. How many people have sky LS's that have been there for a year or more? Mine's been there for over 2 and we're still not done. I know this can be spread to more than just abjurations, but they're easiest to make an example with. Simplest thing to do would be to make the KS99s drop abjurations or drop an item to force-pop Fafhogg, KB or Aspid. And make all the NMs in sky force pop from a farmed item like the Olla pots. There is more but it's late and I'm tired.

I guess the only thing we really can do is hope SE gets a clue and tosses their pride out the window and actually admits their prize game needs a major overhaul and actually do it.

Post by **Sugami** » Sun Dec 10, 2006 12:39 pm

Ambrey wrote:What does this say? Someone is obviously doing a better job..

Better job at what? Advertising? Then yes Blizzard is doing a better job.
Keeping RMT under check? No, they're suffering worse than we are.

Vatrina wrote:As for the actual topic of this thread...when SE designed the game, RMT was unheard of, and certainly wasn't organized like it is now. The problem is, they designed the game to favor RMT, without realizing it. Lots of time invested into one set of NMs just for arguably the best gear in the game; i.e. sky and and land gods. Abjurations are still the most coveted items. How many people have sky LS's that have been there for a year or more? Mine's been there for over 2 and we're still not done. I know this can be spread to more than just abjurations, but they're easiest to make an example with. Simplest thing to do would be to make the KS99s drop abjurations or drop an item to force-pop Fafhogg, KB or Aspid. And make all the NMs in sky force pop from a farmed item like the Olla pots. There is more but it's late and I'm tired.

I guess the only thing we really can do is hope SE gets a clue and tosses their pride out the window and actually admits their prize game needs a major overhaul and actually do it.

Didn't the one of the devs say there would be more ways to obtain abjurations in the future?

Sakino · Post by **Sakino** » Sun Dec 10, 2006 2:54 pm

All popular MMORPGs suffer RMT problems. The larger the playerbase, the more RMTers there are.

One thing that sets FFXI apart from some MMORPGs however is the fact that they don't condone the practices or 3rd party apps for that matter.

Post by **Karou Ariyen** » Sun Dec 10, 2006 5:30 pm

IRS thing is old news, Their not going to start making us file tax returns... that violates every constitutional law in america. For one thing, what about minors? You can't force them to file tax returns if they dont work, Not even the Supreme Court would allow that.

And RMTs..... I will admit that I enjoy pretending to be friends of RMT only to report them to GMs for bans. Its wrong, dirty, sneaky, but in all honesty I"VE HAD IT!!!! Hades has gotten better since the Special Task Force and a lot of us players are doing what we can to expose rmt to the GMs/Special Task Force. The Players Have Had It! Im fighting to take my server back for my players and my enjoyment!

Post by **Alya Mizar (Tsybil)** » Sun Dec 10, 2006 6:59 pm

KarouKaniyashia wrote:IRS thing is old news, Their not going to start making us file tax returns...

There was no law mandating the filing of tax returns last time I looked. Only the paying and collection of taxes.

The article is later and in more depth than the last one I saw. It raises some interesting points.

From my point of view, which has no standing in any court, if I sell virtual assets, that is to say convert them into US$, then they are taxable in US$. As long as those assets are in Vanad'iel, if they are to be taxed, the Grand Duke will accept his taxes in Gil, I am sure the IRS will do the same.

Think about the deflation we are currently experiencing. When do they set the value on, say an Enhancing Sword? June when it was 20M? Last week when I saw one at 8M? The week before Xmas? Dec 31? Now think about the value of a Rare/Ex piece like a Ridil or a Joytoy.

Then there is the deflation of a mature game with few new entries like PSOL before PSU. Or a dying game in where things that once sold for $100s cannot be given away. This would make a dying game a great tax shelter.

Sakino · Post by **Sakino** » Sun Dec 10, 2006 10:15 pm

KarouKaniyashia wrote:And RMTs..... I will admit that I enjoy pretending to be friends of RMT only to report them to GMs for bans. Its wrong, dirty, sneaky, but in all honesty I"VE HAD IT!!!! Hades has gotten better since the Special Task Force and a lot of us players are doing what we can to expose rmt to the GMs/Special Task Force. The Players Have Had It! Im fighting to take my server back for my players and my enjoyment!

Oh behalf of FFXI players everywhere I salute you!

Post by **Ambrey** » Sun Dec 10, 2006 10:45 pm

Sugami wrote:
Ambrey wrote:What does this say? Someone is obviously doing a better job..
Better job at what? Advertising? Then yes Blizzard is doing a better job.
Keeping RMT under check? No, they're suffering worse than we are.

Vatrina wrote:As for the actual topic of this thread...when SE designed the game, RMT was unheard of, and certainly wasn't organized like it is now. The problem is, they designed the game to favor RMT, without realizing it. Lots of time invested into one set of NMs just for arguably the best gear in the game; i.e. sky and and land gods. Abjurations are still the most coveted items. How many people have sky LS's that have been there for a year or more? Mine's been there for over 2 and we're still not done. I know this can be spread to more than just abjurations, but they're easiest to make an example with. Simplest thing to do would be to make the KS99s drop abjurations or drop an item to force-pop Fafhogg, KB or Aspid. And make all the NMs in sky force pop from a farmed item like the Olla pots. There is more but it's late and I'm tired.

I guess the only thing we really can do is hope SE gets a clue and tosses their pride out the window and actually admits their prize game needs a major overhaul and actually do it.
Didn't the one of the devs say there would be more ways to obtain abjurations in the future?

I have yet to see as big of an RMT problem in WoW as I have FFXI. Sure in WoW I have gotten a couple of RMT ads in my mail box before but as for actually seeing roving bands of RMT's botting and claiming mobs and what not, no I haven't seen any of that. And honestly most items on the AH are fairly priced and you can actually make good money off of crafting and instead of it costing you 7million gil to lvl 3 skill lvls, you actually skill up your crafts at a decent rate.

As for SE giving FFXI a major overhaul, it wont happen. Theyll make a new MMORPG before they give FFXI an overhaul. No doubt about it though, FFXI has the best graphics Ive seen for an MMORPG. I loved the job system, the races, graphics, battle style but the game is flawed. And with how their subscribers keep declining and the problems with the RMT still rising, I doubt FFXI will be around for too many more years, which is a shame.

Sakino · Post by **Sakino** » Mon Dec 11, 2006 3:39 am

Ambrey wrote:And with how their subscribers keep declining and the problems with the RMT still rising, I doubt FFXI will be around for too many more years, which is a shame.

The two are intertwined. A declining playerbase will make RMTers to go elsewhere, like WoW for instance.