Spending Money on MMORPG Information

Unlike other hobbies, playing MMORPG costs the same amount of money for everybody, rich or poor. In a capitalist world this strangely egalitarian state can not last. In the same way that a market exists for expensive televisions, or golf clubs, some people would like to spend more money on the MMORPG of their choice. And just as somebody buying expensive golf clubs does so in the hope of advancing his game, this sort of additional spending on MMORPG is fueled by the hope of advancing in the MMORPG. The previously mentioned trade in virtual goods is just a part of this market. Another major part is trade in MMORPG information.

Many classic MMORPG are heavily information based. You often look for a specific monster, or a specific item, or the place to go for a quest. And often you are just left to look for your target yourself, or ask other people, because the game itself will not tell you where you have to go, or what you have to do. This is probably designed to foster cooperation, but ends up making MMORPG information a marketable good.

The official part of this market is still underdeveloped. Companies like Prima, or Brady, are selling strategy guides to all major MMORPG. They are usually useful in getting started, as they contain a lot of basic information, as well as endless tables of monster statistics and similar data. Unfortunately MMORPG are changing rapidly, and a printed strategy guide based on information that was true just before the game launched risks to become outdated in many respects after only a few months. These strategy guides rely on information from the game developers themselves, so they are often overly optimistic, and you are unlikely to find the information that a certain character class sucks. Right now the MMORPG market isn't yet big enough to support a monthly magazine. I got issue 1 of a UK MMORPG magazine, but issue 2 never appeared. I've seen "online games" magazines, but they usually focus on online shooter games.

But for online role playing games, the logical place to buy information is obviously online, and not some print media. And there is a variety of forms under which this information is on offer. And a lot of information can even be got for free. In fact, if you had unlimited amounts of time, you could probably find all information about any game for free somewhere on the internet, hidden in many different obscure fan pages, and on message boards. Some sites like Allakhazam started offering high quality compilations of information for free, but then the resulting traffic forced the owners to sell "premium memberships", sell advertising space, or beg for money, because all this bandwith does not come for free. Again the information given away or sold by this sort of sites is usually data on monsters and items, but also often information about quests, if the game belongs to the large Everquest-like group of games where the game itself does not provide you enough information to solve the quest on your own.

Enter the name of your MMORPG plus "secrets" or "guide" into Google or EBay, and you see a lot of other offers. A lot of people want to sell you the virtual equivalent of get-rich-quick schemes. The problem is that you have no way of knowing what the quality of the information is, before having paid for it. So especially on EBay there are a lot of low quality guides sold to gullible people desperate for success in their MMORPG. Like buying virtual goods on EBay, buying information on EBay heavily exposes you to the risk of becoming victim of a scammer.

Of course the same risk exists if you buy your information from some web site. But as they have at least some hope of repeat custom from you, they are at least trying to sell you what they believe is useful information. This information is usually of the un-official kind. If your game has a bug that can be exploited to make large amounts of virtual currency or xp, these sites will sell you the information on how to use the exploit. But if it is really an exploit, it risks to be repaired in the next patch, and in the worst case you can get banned for using the exploit. And many of the better games are now at least bug free enough to not have any easy money exploits any more. So the information you are buying might just be some more or less good advice on how to make money or xp fast, which is hyped as some big "secret", but is in fact known to most of the better informed players. Nevertheless, if you don't have the time to search for game information on message boards and fan sites yourself, this might be not such a bad deal. Some sites are even offering some sort of information market, paying people for the best information they post, and then selling this information to others.

The best thing to do is check each offer with a critical eye. Especially for virtual currency you can find out to "going rate" easily enough. So if 20k gil from FFXI cost $20, why would somebody sell you the "secret to make 20k gil per hour" for $5? If it sounds too good to be true, it probably isn't. I only heard bad things about all sources offering to sell "cheats" or "secrets", and I never felt tempted to risk my money finding out how badly I can get scammed. If you are really lost in a MMORPG and don't feel like digging for the info yourself, buying some sort of game guide, printed or online, is probably the better option.
- posted by Tobold @ 2:19 PM Permanent Link