Once again I am on one of my tyraids to gather information about a subject that has intrigued my intrest for sometime now, RTM. As we all know RTM has been a legal TOS activity of EQ2 for a few months now. But because of my ongoing curiosity into these matters, along with not owning this game, i come to you, the players, for a little insite and, hopefully, answers to my questions.
As I said before RTM has always peaked my intrest. Ever since the release and first introduction of RTM, through "UO" i have been amazed, vexed, angered, and always curious as to how these transactions would shape a game world (would that world have a Laissez-faire RTM enviroment). Well it finaly happened. I view the servers that have this "legal" RTM as an experiment. An experiment to see how these actions define, shape, and alter the gaming enviroment, weither for the greater good or evil. As it has been a while(since station exchange was released) now I feel that my questions might have more relivance than say "3 months ago". So lets break the essay format and get right to the questions.
Do any of you play on an RTM and a regular server? If so how would you compare the economies of the 2? Does one have a significantly stronger currency than the other, or are they pretty much the same? is inflation rampant on an RTM server?
We all know a significant portion of people participate in RTM. How would you classify the economy (real world) of the station exchange itself? Have the prices (real world) fallen dramaticly from over abundance of plat, weapons armor, etc?
What is the player bases skill level compared to a normal server? (I for one am under the asumption that people that are on the buying end of RTM are of an inferior skill level, this is because they lack time to dedicate to the game and look for the easy way out)
And finaly... do you think that the servers and the station exchange will eventualy collapse? and if so is it because of an inflation in game currency that destroys the (real) market value of items? or is it a (real) market crash due to high prices that kills the in game economy?
don't answer them all if you don't want... now that i re-read it, it does seem like a short essay test :D I simply find this part of your game simply amazing and would like to know a little about it. I have been doing a lot of research lately on american currency and it's history and in my research foreign currencies had to come into play. My obsession with video games has lead me into the research of RTM as a currency exchange and I would like to research the paralleles of game currency along with a (real) foreign currency, as compared to a US dollar.
Thanks for the insite in advance... :D
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If you're going to use an abbreviation repeatedly in a post, it's generally a good idea to explain what the abbreviation means the first time, even if it's glaringly obvious to you.
I have no idea what RTM means. Not a clue. I can figure out by the context of the post that you're talking about selling virtual items for real cash, but the abbreviation you use still leaves me scratching my head.
I play exclusively on a Station Exchange server, so I can't compare Exchange to non-Exchange at all. My observations:
There seem to be few people who go out of their way to help people for no better reason than to help them. It happens (such as when I got a Lv. 60 Berserker to come help take out an Epic x4 Skeleton Boss that popped up at one of the Griffin Tower construction sites), but it's rare. At lower levels (sub-40), it's hard to find a group to do anything less monumental than Heritage Quests unless you're part of a large, social guild or play with people you know.
In addition, there's an abundance of stupid Broker pricing. The House Items section of the Broker, in particular, is flooded with items that can be bought in NPC stores for a few silver, going for several gold, or even platinum.
I don't know whether inflation is rampant or not, since I don't have a basline to compare to. However, I don't have any trouble selling the skill books I loot, nor do I have a hard time buying my own skill books. I have noticed that Tier 6 common harvested items like Stonehide pelts and Indium Clusters are dirt cheap on the Broker (lower than T2 commons, in fact), but I suspect that the reason for that is mostly to do with the fact that there aren't any T6 Crafting Writs to absorb all of the mining that people do while looking for Rares - something that happens on non-Exchange servers as well (at least, according to some of the rants I see on the official EQ2 message board).
There are MANY people on Shadowhaven, at least, who don't participate at all in the Exchange, and quite a few who don't even understand what it is.
Platinum prices on the Exchange fluctuate, as with any trade-based economy, but the price for in-game coin seems to be fairly stable at $8-$10 per plat. Character prices are all over the place, and it's difficult to sell items other than extremely rare drop items or stacks of rare ink ingredients. Selling platinum seems to be the most practical way to make use of the Exchange for consistent financial profit.
With the legitimizing of the sales of virtual goods, the price point for the virtual items seems to be much lower. I've heard of people literally making a better living by selling gold or accounts in other games like WoW than a minimum-wage job could provide. The same is not true with the Exchange. Unless you're a mad grinding machine, a 40-hour work week isn't likely to net you much at all.
That being said, using the Exchange has made EQ2 more than pay for itself over the past few months. I've been paying my EQ2 subscription with my PayPal debit card, and minor other expenses as well. That'll improve as I get my main character up into the higher levels (I expect to be able to buy DoF with cash made on the Exchange within a few weeks), but for now, it's just mostly paying for itself.
Is the Exchange economy going down? I couldn't tell you. I haven't been playing long enough to have a solid baseline for comparison. However, the total anonymity involved with the Exchange (Buyers don't know who the Sellers are, Sellers don't know who the Buyers are, and you never get to know the original name of characters you buy - you're forced to rename it immediately) makes it so that anyone can wedge themselves into the market and sell things.
Edited, Wed Nov 23 11:57:47 2005 by Nekojin
I have no idea what RTM means. Not a clue. I can figure out by the context of the post that you're talking about selling virtual items for real cash, but the abbreviation you use still leaves me scratching my head.
I play exclusively on a Station Exchange server, so I can't compare Exchange to non-Exchange at all. My observations:
There seem to be few people who go out of their way to help people for no better reason than to help them. It happens (such as when I got a Lv. 60 Berserker to come help take out an Epic x4 Skeleton Boss that popped up at one of the Griffin Tower construction sites), but it's rare. At lower levels (sub-40), it's hard to find a group to do anything less monumental than Heritage Quests unless you're part of a large, social guild or play with people you know.
In addition, there's an abundance of stupid Broker pricing. The House Items section of the Broker, in particular, is flooded with items that can be bought in NPC stores for a few silver, going for several gold, or even platinum.
I don't know whether inflation is rampant or not, since I don't have a basline to compare to. However, I don't have any trouble selling the skill books I loot, nor do I have a hard time buying my own skill books. I have noticed that Tier 6 common harvested items like Stonehide pelts and Indium Clusters are dirt cheap on the Broker (lower than T2 commons, in fact), but I suspect that the reason for that is mostly to do with the fact that there aren't any T6 Crafting Writs to absorb all of the mining that people do while looking for Rares - something that happens on non-Exchange servers as well (at least, according to some of the rants I see on the official EQ2 message board).
There are MANY people on Shadowhaven, at least, who don't participate at all in the Exchange, and quite a few who don't even understand what it is.
Platinum prices on the Exchange fluctuate, as with any trade-based economy, but the price for in-game coin seems to be fairly stable at $8-$10 per plat. Character prices are all over the place, and it's difficult to sell items other than extremely rare drop items or stacks of rare ink ingredients. Selling platinum seems to be the most practical way to make use of the Exchange for consistent financial profit.
With the legitimizing of the sales of virtual goods, the price point for the virtual items seems to be much lower. I've heard of people literally making a better living by selling gold or accounts in other games like WoW than a minimum-wage job could provide. The same is not true with the Exchange. Unless you're a mad grinding machine, a 40-hour work week isn't likely to net you much at all.
That being said, using the Exchange has made EQ2 more than pay for itself over the past few months. I've been paying my EQ2 subscription with my PayPal debit card, and minor other expenses as well. That'll improve as I get my main character up into the higher levels (I expect to be able to buy DoF with cash made on the Exchange within a few weeks), but for now, it's just mostly paying for itself.
Is the Exchange economy going down? I couldn't tell you. I haven't been playing long enough to have a solid baseline for comparison. However, the total anonymity involved with the Exchange (Buyers don't know who the Sellers are, Sellers don't know who the Buyers are, and you never get to know the original name of characters you buy - you're forced to rename it immediately) makes it so that anyone can wedge themselves into the market and sell things.
Edited, Wed Nov 23 11:57:47 2005 by Nekojin
RTM = "Read The Manual", but he forgot the "F".
Why would reading the manual be against any TOS??? I don't think that's what he is talking about.
Real Trade Market?
I gotta go with Rude Temporal Manipulation.
Quote:
Why would reading the manual be against any TOS??? I don't think that's what he is talking about.
It violates the Universal Unspoken End User Terms of Service charter of 1980, cosigned by IBM and MicroSoft, to force application users to read their manual before contacting OEM Customer Service and/or internal IT support personnel.
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