Real Money Trade (RMT) that Pleases Everyone?

From the post I made just a few days ago, Epics for the Casual Gamer, it seems clear to me that Blizzards World of Warcraft could do with a few extra options for those of us at the end game. The really good gear seems to be reserved not for those hardcore gamers who are willing to work for it, but for a subset of these gamers who have large chunks of free time. Currently then, those of us at 60 who still play the game regularly but in only small blocks, or at odd times, are being left out in the cold. Just what are we paying $15 a month for?

My minds been racing over the last few days, and I finally woke up at 5am this morning with an idea that I had to get down on paper (or disc as the case may be). I figured there must be an RMT model that could work as part of a MMORPG.

Now, we all know that MMORPGs and RMT work together, if they didn’t World of Warcraft wouldn’t be so popular, Project Entropia wouldn’t work at all (related post: Your Project Entropia Withdrawl Limit is...) and Sony wouldn’t have relented on their strict ‘no RMT’ policy to bring out Station Exchange in 2005.

Essentially the whole thing centers around a moral argument between players. There are those who feel that RMT in MMORPGs is:

a) cheating and
b) detracts from the fantasy of the game.

These are not unfair points, however they does miss the point that we don’t all have large enough chunks of time to invest in high level dungeon runs, but we are willing to work hard for better gear. It also misses the point that any number of people you play with in World of Warcraft (or many other games) could have had their characters power levelled, rankings levelled, instance runs completed by a service provider or just be jacked full of bought cash.

And unless they told you, you would never know.

Lets put aside the fact that you can earn gear by doing battlegrounds in World of Warcraft. Why? Because this gear is predominately geared up to PvP combat. I want to address the issue of getting PvE gear (as I’m not a big PvPer).

As I mentioned in my previous post it seems to me developers could introduce more quests like that for getting the Darkmoon Faire Amulet, and introduce complete articles as faction rewards rather than patterns for them. But that’s another posting, lets look at how I think RMT could be squeezed into World of Warcraft without pissing off people too much and unbalancing the game.

RMT in WoW

I think a good starting point would be to take a tip from Sony and start up RMT enabled servers. Within this environment at least you would know what you were getting and could stay away if you chose to. Of course normal trading would still be possible in this realm, but RMT would also be an option.

Auctioning for Real Cash

I think you could also introduce RMT as an option in normal realms. As an extra option when putting up items on the auction house why not add a ‘Make Purchase’ button available which would allow players to buy the item with real cash (the price of which would be a reflection of the Gold price, converetd into real dollars at present exchange rates). You could, and probably should, restrict this action to higher level items which have reached a certain threshold in terms of their in-game price. For those with pots of gold buying power remains unaffected, just buy it with your gold. For those with pots of cash but no gold this gives you the chance to buy something nice!

Let’s not forget those of you with lots of free time and items to auction would also be able to make real money off us lowly time short people. Surely no-one would object to that?

Buying High End - End Game Gear

Now let’s look at epics and other gear that you should really only be able to get from instances like Molten Core, Blackwing Lair and Zul Gurub. In my model these items would be purchasable with real cash from certain vendors, the prices reflecting the amount of gold similar items are fetching on the auction house. To make certain that this opportunity was not just taken advantage of, detracting from the pull of high level instance runs (I doubt this would be the case given the split among players on RMT), there should be a penalty for making this purchase. One which comes to mind would be a time penalty.

If you had gone into Molten Core looking for Bloodfang Pants (or something) then you would have had to invest quite a bit of time to get this. If you buy the gear then your account should get a time penalty on it of say 8 hours in which you can not play. That won’t match the amount of time you might otherwise have to put in to get Bloodfang Pants, but let’s not forget by buying this item you’re already effectively monetarily fined.

You could also slap a durability fine on bought gear as this would be heavily damaged during a raid.

RMT Class of Gear

Another possibility would be to introduce RMT gear, World of Warcraft already has PvP and PvE gear. Rather than being able to buy the best gear in the game you would be able to buy something comparable, but with some sort of limitation.

Conclusion

Personally I think that if people are willing to pay their real hard earned cash for better items then they should be allowed to do so. One way or another we all pay for the virtual assets we own (ownership of virtual assests is a whole other kettle of fish!), whether you pay in virtual cash, real cash or your time.

Your thoughts?

I’m always interested to hear what other people think on these kinds of matters (and my rambling posts). How do you see things developing, is there a middle ground? Is RMT here to stay? Why do we feeel the need to twink our virtual alter egos?