Well, in single player games I cheat now and then for the reasons already mentioned. I could be stuck and want to see the end of the game. That I don't have any problem with. In fact I can't understand people that are opposed to it since it isn't hurting them the least bit, but I guess I'm just stupid that way.

In multiplayer or MMO games I'm almost rabidly opposed to cheating. Even buying gold is in my opinion something that should be punished, and punished hard. Why? Because the acts of cheating gives you an edge over the ones that aren't cheating, if ever so slight. In some cases other people are directly affected. In these days when hacking of accounts is quite common it's not that hard to figure out that all that money that disappears from those accounts turn out being sold to other players for money. Would such things happen if there wasn't any demand for it? No. So each and every one out there that buy gold remember that when you do, you are in a quite large proportion responsible for other players grief. Even if you happen to buy from some "manual" farmer you still create a demand, and since there is a demand more desperate measures are being created to meet those demands.
 

Would such things happen if there wasn't any demand for it?

I never liked that argument. It is equivalent to argueing against prostitution because of "white slave" trade, or argueing against marijuana because of some criminal drug addicts robbing and stealing to finance their habit. You avoid tackling the really hard moral issue at the core of the problem by creating a false equivalence to a really easy moral issue.

Of course account hacking is wrong and evil. But it also happens, to a smaller degree admitedly, due to people just wanting to grief others. You hear a lot of stories of characters from hacked accounts being deleted, which has no financial motivation whatsoever. Saying RMT is bad because it leads to bad things is too easy.

Because the acts of cheating gives you an edge over the ones that aren't cheating, if ever so slight.

That is the point of cheating. But why would that be bad? Why should somebody who is a less good player or a player who simply has less available time not be allowed to advance faster through cheating? A MMORPG is not a competition, the purpose is to maximize fun for everybody. Why not have an easy setting through cheating which allows players that aren't able to compete at the standard hard setting to still experience the game to the end? If somebody wants to fast-forward through parts of a film on DVD or skip some boring passages in a book to advance faster, why shouldn't that be allowed?
 

Like it or not, MMORPGs are also competitions. PvP is by default competetive, and better gear bought (or acquired through a honor-grinding service) can make a huge difference.

And even in PvE, especially high-end PvE, there's considerable bragging rights involved. If your guild defeats boss x first on your faction/server/continent, there's considerable fame involved and even some preferential treatment from Blizzard. Beta keys, GMs standing by to help you in case you run into bugs in bleeding-edge content and so on.

There's one peculiar thing about endgame guilds, though. Many of them do not want to cheat. To them, getting through the content is not the objective. They want the game to challenge them, to force them to perform at their peak. To them, cheating defeats the purpose of raiding. Because being challenged is their main goal, they want the encounters to work right and to be able to prevail on their own. That's why they go solo 5-man dungeons, kill Onyxia or Loatheb with 5-mans, kite raid bosses around, AoE 50 mobs at the same time and so on.

Some single-player game makers have encountered the same phenomenon. They offer incentives in terms of bonus items, hidden ending sequences and so on to player who complete the game at the most difficult settings. There's even plenty of videos where the player purposefully gimps himself by not taking an important upgrade or restricting his gear to get even more challenge out of the game.
 

creating a false equivalence to a really easy moral issue.

How is it false? Ok, I might have stated that incorrectly, that I admit. It wouldn't not happen at all, but it still increases the problem by quite a large part. Comparing it to marijuana creating robbings and such isn't really fair since robbings can still happen for financial benefit. Hacking accounts, if not for gold selling which is the main economic benefit with it, would have almost no such financial benefit without it.

That is the point of cheating. But why would that be bad?
....
A MMORPG is not a competition

But that's where you are wrong, at least in many cases. Many games have some sort of PvP, and what is that if not competition? As soon as you get such a competition in the equation cheating is, and should be, punishable. Even if it's just slight you still get ahead of other players.

Also, since there is interactions of another kind between players in MMO games it could be bad. Imagine being able to skip to L60 fast on a new server, farming for a certain material or maxing a tradeskill and flooding the auction house with wares that could not have been there unless you had been able to get that edge. You could seriously affect the other players possibility to gain gold through normal means.
Since there is interaction in a MMO game your cheating can have more implications than you are aware of. Some things could occur naturally, but at a slower pace shouldn't that cheating be possible.
 

MMORPG with their open gameplay can certainly contain competitive elements. But as Nick already stated, MMORPG are inherently unfair, because different people have different amounts of time available to play, and MMORPG reward time spent far more than they reward skill.

Regarding PvP, just look at the level 10-19 WSG battlegrounds in World of Warcraft. Everybody in there is a twink, in full blue armor. They got that gear by having a level 60 friend run them through deadmines a couple of times, or their level 60 alts buying level 19 blue items on the AH or farming them. So even if there is not RMT to finance it, PvP is unfair. And again, before *and* after the 2.0 patch, your PvP rewards depend more on how many hours you spend doing PvP (or getting gear) than how skilled you are in PvP. If anyone thinks that WoW PvP is a fair competition which is all about skill and which would be spoilt by RMT, he is deluding himself.
 

As always, self-interest is the motivating factor, not 'fairness'.

Not at all. Once I might have had almost as much time as possible to spend on a MMO but that certainly isn't true any more. So I would have everything to gain by "buying time" from someone else according to your statement, but I don't and am very much against it. It is in fact just because I want the game fair.

Also to once again use a (according to Tobold) false equivalence to a really easy moral issue, that farmer that you are employing (because that's in effect what you do, employ them) would most likely (say to a >95% degree) not be there if you or others wouldn't be demanding their services to get ahead of other players. Whether you or others use it to just improve your enjoyment it will most likely affect other players negatively.

Say that you buy gold for your epic mount and go looking for ore or herbs in WoW. I'm at the same time also looking for the same resource and am in the same zone. If you have that epic mount you could reach that resource faster than me and therefore in effect be able to aquire what would have been mine should you not have had it. It is a minor thing yes, but you have still been able to use that gold to get ahead of me. How can you justify that? Your cheating for a higher enjoyment of the game WILL have a negative effect on other players enjoyment of the game. So is that what you are then doing also, buying enjoyment from others as if it was the same commodity as time? No, you are stealing it since I would certainly have nothing to gain for it.

And regarding Tobold's last post (I'm lucky I saw it before posting this.):
Oh, I'm certainly not living in a dreamworld not knowing that people with more time will have an edge over the ones that doesn't have as much (and/or with more friends that does have time too). It's just that that edge is defined into the game, however little we like it, so there's not much else to do than to accept it. Sure you can go whine a bit on the developers boards, maybe you get lucky and they listen, but there's not that much chance that they listen. In any case, buying gold or time and thereby stealing enjoyment from others (if even to a slight degree) isn't defined by the game, so that's why it becomes unfair. As with most games, anything outside the rules is considered unfair. If someone in WoW wants to GIVE you gold for your epic mount I will not complain. That's still according to the rules of the game. Buying that gold however is not.


Anyway, I tend to get too involved in discussions such as these in the end. I've stated my opinions and views. Blizzard has their view, make of it what you will. I'll try to avoid posting in this thread any more. :)
 

As ever RMT gets emotive, very emotive. And I can never understand why.

It is a game. It doesn't exist. That clump of Dreamfoil is not "yours" or "mine". It doesn't exist. If you had to spend an extra 5 mins looking for another, so what. It is not like you would have left the game 5 minutes earlier and gone and done something more fun. This IS fun. So you don't get your Axe of of Molten Lead for an extra day or two. Do you really really care ? Was you life incomplete before you got it ? Was playing as a level 10 really sooooo hard ? Or actually, as we keep getting told, was playing at level 10 actuall more "fun" than grinding our raids at 60 ?

The day that playing a game like WoW has ANY real world "value" will be the day when it really does become "cheating".
 

Hehe, really sorry. This is why I said that I will "try" to avoid posting any more. ;p
I just couldn't resist this one though:

The day that playing a game like WoW has ANY real world "value" will be the day when it really does become "cheating".

Can anyone else see why he is tripping himself with this statement? Should be obvious to most that have read the discussion above. :)
 

As with most games, anything outside the rules is considered unfair.

Rules are arbitrary. RMT is allowed on some EQ2 servers, but not on all of them, and not in WoW. The question whether RMT is "okay" or not is a moral question, which can't be that arbitrary. People tend to ignore rules they don't agree with morally, otherwise all that file sharing internet traffic wouldn't exist. And it can't be morally right to do RMT on one EQ2 server and morally wrong to do it on another, the effect on the game economy and on other players is the same.

Everybody has to decide for himself whether he thinks that RMT is morally wrong or okay. And you can't just see the possible negative effect in isolation. Everything has a possible negative effect, but it has to be seen in context with the possible positive effect. The tiny edge the guy gets in collecting Dreamfoil with his RMT financed epic horse has to be seen in context with the overall fairness of the game. Why should the guy who has 12 hours per day and farmed for the epic horse himself get that same edge, and the guy willing to pay somebody else $50 for the epic horse shouldn't? Both players pay the same monthly fee to Blizzard and should have the same right to the content. They just use different resources to the same end. RMT creates unfairness, but at the same time it balances a bigger existing unfairness inherent in the game.
 

There's two things that make a game a game:

1) competetiveness (against other players or/and obstacles set by the game).

2) agreed upon rules (so the competetion is meaningful)

There is no contradiction in EQ having both servers where RTM is allowed and where it is not, since you are having two servers with different set of rules that are common to all in that server. What is cheating is breaking the rules for your own advantage. Of course you can argue if rules should be changed, and I wouldn't mind if Blizzard made new serbers where RTM is allowed (i myself wouldn't play on them), but practising "vigilantisism" in form of cheating is morally questionable.
 

Alright Tobold, according to your argument then, it sounds like you would side with the guild who was banned for hacking into AQ40 so they could bypass trash mobs.

They justified it by stating they simply didn't have "time" to keep clearing out those mobs. So they shouldn't be punished for not having as much time as other guilds, correct?
 

Although i understand your reasoning Tobold, i disagree with you.

Maybe you can compare it to IRL rules? Why are there speedlimits?
There are lots of times when you are driving on a road wich is empty and has a lot of room, so it wouldn't harm anyone to drive a bit faster.
Should it be allowed? Should you be fined for it anyway?

People are not able to always make the right choice... and the rules can't be made clear.
We know in much cases speed makes traffic dangerous and causes accidents and death to yourself and other people around. That's why it's not allowed. And that's why it should be punished. Otherwise people will try to do it anyway (because by default they have bad judgment (if not evil intentions;)), and accidents will happen.

I understand from a commercial point of view why it is 'gedoogd' (not allowed, but not punished either - any dutch speaker who can translate?) by blizzard. And from a consumer's point of view it's nice to be able to catch up without sacrifing to much IRL. I do think that more accidents happen in this case. Question is? - Is this acceptable?

If Blizzard would be able to ensure that only legitimate farming can happen - it might be a solution. Allthough i think a lot of players would dislike the idea... that others can simply buy their way upto their level of accomplishment...

I don't mind, i'll have fun anyway. I do mind the accidents though.
 

I'll make some comments on the points made.
For the record, I'm one of those who are "almost rabidly against" cheating in any form.

To (attempt to) make myself clear - If the game allows it, then do it.
Examples to illustrate my stance:
Legit: Work the AH with add-ons and farm with a 60 main and the help of guildies to get gold for fiery for your 19 twink's weapon
Cheating: Use your credit card to buy gold from a manual Chinese farmer to get gold for fiery for your 19 twink's weapon

Someone mentioned PvP, as in "the battlegrounds".
That's a good case-in-point that gold-buying (even on PvE servers) is not a 'victimless crime'. In that case, my game experience and my quest for PvP items is directly impacted by someone else's cheating.

And let's not forget that there are PvP *servers* out there, and buying gold on such a server would circumvent the risk of getting ganked while farming and also gives a gear advantage to the gold buyer - gear that can result in tilting a competitive encounter.
And even on PvE servers people go PvP from time to time in order to complete quests, such the towers in the Plaguelands, resources in Silithus, and the new Horde Blood Elf quest line in The Bulwark.

Finally, gold farming leads to AH item price inflation (that, as I recall, was actually one reason that Blizz gave for the mass bot bannings). On some servers (before mass bannings) the AH prices got so high that they were actually driving people I know to pay to change servers! After the bannings the prices self-adjusted down.

Now, to me, the more interesting and legit discussion would be whether Blizz should add a vendor in Orgrimmar and Ironforge who takes your credit card number and charges you $$$ for in-game gold...
 

I was farming Felcloth in Felwood for my Robe of the Void (40 pieces of Felcloth required). Time and time again I was forced to race 3 or 4 farming bots to every kill, or had to hang around waiting for respawns bacuse everything was dead. Yes, it was my choice to grind the cloth, but making me have to spend twice as long doing it because of farmers was really annoying.
I attribute this waste of my time to (1) People buying gold (2) Blizzard making such a rare drop accessible to farmers in the first place.
An alternative would be to make only tailors capable of picking up Felcloth, in the same way that only Skinners can skin leather. Sure, farmers could learn tailoring too, but it would be a lot more onerous for them, and to have their bot deleted for farming would be much more of a punishment than at present - think of the gold they would lose if they had to level tailoring too!
 

Alright Tobold, according to your argument then, it sounds like you would side with the guild who was banned for hacking into AQ40 so they could bypass trash mobs. They justified it by stating they simply didn't have "time" to keep clearing out those mobs. So they shouldn't be punished for not having as much time as other guilds, correct?

I was talking about morally right or wrong. I don't think that this guild did something which was morally wrong, because again their "hacking" didn't hurt other players. Whether something is punished, just like in the case of speed limits, is a completely different question, it has nothing to do with morality. There is a rule, you break it, you get punished, whether that rule is morally right or wrong. Whether you break the speed limit on a deserted road or on the road in front of the primary school carries the same legal penalty, although the latter is obviously more morally objectionable than the former.

So look at the AQ40 case in a different light: "Cheating" is usually a way for players to overcome perceived shortcomings of the game. In this case the guild cheated because they wanted to fight a specific boss, and not all the boring bosses before it. Now look at Burning Crusade dungeons, and you will see that Blizzard introduced a solution to exactly that problem, splitting the dungeons into wings. You now *can* visit the last third of a dungeon without having to do the first two-thirds again and again. So while Blizzard was right to ban them for hacking, at least they also recognized that the guild had a justifiable beef with WoW, and addressed it.

The same thing could happen with RMT. Blizzard could introduce solutions like "easy mode" servers for time-strapped players, where earning cash and xp is easier, removing the need for RMT. Just like the wall-hack, RMT is just one way of players addressing a very real game design problem, the "one-size-fits-all" MMORPG difficulty level. You'd want all players to get the same amount of enjoyment out of a MMORPG, even if they can't invest thousands of hours in it.
 

I rarely ever post, but I find this discussion too interesting not to ;)

Let's make some analogies here. I pay a maid to clean up my house. Am I cheating in life as I decide to pay someone to do something so I can have time to do something else. It's a simple economic transaction, i'm spending a resource (money) to earn another resource (time) that's more valuable to me (if it wouldn't be more valuable to me, why would I do the exchange in the first place?). Now, let's say I use the time I gain from not having to clean up my house myself to farm gold on WoW for my characters. Am I cheating on WoW as I used RL money to earn time to farm the money? I'm pretty sure noone would answer yes :P Altough, if I decided to clean up my house myself and use the same amount of money I spend on the maid each week to buy WoW gold (which would prolly be a better economic decision as the hourly rate of american maids vs gold farmers is very high, but let's not go there), it would be considered cheating? I'd really like to understand the difference. Is it actually the time spent "in WoW"?

If we stop mixing up RL resource and in-game resource, let's say that I'm pretty good a levelling low level chars, but I suck at farming gold. Now let's say a friend of mine is very good at making money but sucks at levelling chars. If he agrees to give me an amount of in-game gold to level his char to a certain level, am I cheating? What is the difference between that and RMT?

I think what bugs people the most with RMT is the fact that "real" currency is exchanged for "virtual" currency. What we need to keep in mind is that "real" money is not more real than wow gold. US dollars have value only inside a very specific economic context. If a catastrophic event would happen that would ruin the US economy, the US dollars would end up beign as worthless as WoW gold when WoW will end. The likelyhood it happens is way way way lower, but it's the exact same thing. The amount of money in your bank acount is just a number stored in some database somewhere, excactly as your amount of WoW gold is...

Now, for the guild that did a wall hack to bypass content, that's different. We're talking about modifying game mechanics to gain a competitive edge, not to do a fair economic trade.

Anyway, just my two cents... I really don't understand why people are so emotional about RMT... It's just a very simple economic transaction.
 

Since the dawn of the RPG video game, time spent playing has been the number one factor for improving your character. I remember playing Dragon Warrior on my NES and trying to defeat the last boss at a lower then recommended level. Finally I broke down and spent a weekend gaining a couple more levels on metallic slimes. The last dungeon was a breeze after that. If you are playing a RPG I really think you need to accept that those with more free time are going to have an advantage. If you want a game where hand-eye coordination comes more into play then time /played then it sounds like you want more of an adventure type game.

To the Economic Transaction idea:

The problem with farmers harvesting currency from level 60 spawn points 24/7 is that they artificially increase the rate of inflation. A single farmer in a day probably introduces into the economy the same amount of currency as 15 actual players. This really hurts new people to the game who can only kill low level mobs for small amounts of currency which has almost no value in the inflated economy. They are often convinced they have to buy gold since the value of what they can earn is so low. Also developers are often forced to introduce more currency sinks into the game to fight this inflation. Notice the price of putting items up in the AH has gone up twice since the beginning of World of Warcraft and that newer items in the game have more durability to increase repair costs.

The standard MMO system of having spawned mobs introduce currency cannot handle farmers.
 

Interesting discussion.

It seems quite simple to me.
If you agree to the WoW EULA statement of Blizzard, then you are morally bound to abide by it.
It's the same concept as when one gets a driver's license, one makes oneself morally (and legally) bound to abide by the traffic laws.

I would contend that when one reduces morality to 'degrees' and uses a basis of 'whether it harms another', morality becomes subjective - and in a practical sense, entirely useless. The effect is, in the end, (to use the traffic case) everyone drives the way they want to, the speed they want to, and does whatever they can 'get away' with, with the end result being anarchy (sometimes realized on US roadways as violent 'road rage').

The speeding example is a case-in-point:
One can either strictly abide by the speed laws whether on a deserted road or in a crowded school zone, or...
One can drive whatever speed one deems is safe given the current conditions (which will probably vary widely depending on the individual) and enforcement

The school zone example is a particularly interesting choice, since around here one of the local news channels did a hidden-camera "sting" on some of the school zones a while back and found that most cars were not slowing to the school zone speed limit, but were in fact driving 5-10 mph above the non-school zone speed limit!
One of the reasons for law: People left on their own have shown themselves, generally-speaking, to be very selfish and self-serving in their choices (in this case putting children in danger, likely for no better reason than they wouldn't be bothered to slow down for a block or so).

On the other hand, in another case a lady (with her two young children) were driving on a deserted country road in excess of the speed limit at night after a heavy rain, flew past a flood warning sign too quickly to react, and drove headlong into a flood-swollen creek - resulting in the death of her two children.
Obviously she hadn't anticipated any danger in speeding on a country road. But sometimes law is in place to protect persons from impacts that they didn't anticipate, and may never come to realize - unless the law is broken and bad things result.

The bottom line is...
In virtually every case one can postulate, yes, it does (or has the potential to) actually hurt someone to violate the rule or law, and
*Morally*, when one agrees to abide by law, one is bound by that law.
 

One thing I would like to posit to Tobold and others who believe the RMT aspect of 'cheating' is harmless to other players (a corollary to Relmstein's excellent point): the logical extension of the argument is for Blizzard to sell gold. $20 per thousand, undercut the gold farmers. Bam. All those who 'value their time' can benefit. Blizz has another revenue stream to apply to new servers, added content, or padding the shareholder value. Gold famers aren't competing for the rare drops. At least, at first they aren't.

Seriously, if you think there's no harm in RMT to a MMOG, then how can argue against this?

But a moment's consideration will show the huge flaws in this suggestion.
 

Brock, that's something of a facile point.

What I was saying (and I'm sure Tobold would agree) is that gold buying is only harmless if harvested by the normal mechanisms and under the normal constraints of the playerbase. No bots, no selling by the developer, no scams dupes or bugs.

Clearly what you suggest would be inflationary.
 

And the discussion continues... :)

I find it incongruous to argue against Brock's suggestion (that Blizz sell gold) by saying it would be "inflationary", and yet claim that the actions of manual gold farming for the sole purpose of selling gold would not be inflationary. In fact, IMO it has already been established / conceded that bot gold farming causes inflation, so it is tenuous to claim that manual gold farming is not inflationary.

Both Brock's 'suggestion' and manual gold farming have exactly the same effect: Artificially introduce more gold into the system.
The major difference is that in one case gold is "spawned" by direct purchase, in the second case a gold farmer* / middleman harvests in-game spawns - mobs - for the coin they drop. The question of which would cause more inflation is subject to a number of variables I'll not address here...

*Gold farmer - and important term in this case, whom I would define as one whose sole purpose in the game is to level as quickly as possible to 60, and then farm spawns as efficiently as possible with the sole intent of generating gold to sell.
This is contrary to 'normal' MMO activity, an important component of which is interaction with other persons in a virtual environment. A gold farmer is not interested in interaction (other than for you to purchase his gold), rather, he would prefer not to have any players around disrupting his farming routine.
The gold farmer won't be taking time raiding, or to run a guildie through SM, or PvP for a while, or pursue a profession -- just farm in order to generate more coin to sell.

That Blizz has not (to my knowledge) banned gold buyers, or manual gold farmer / sellers, should not be construed as an endorsement of either practice.
Nor should it be assumed that Blizz will never discipline or ban them.
 

I agree with Relmstein. Gold farmers are basically self-perpetuating. If they didn't exist, there would be less need for them.

The other reason I dislike buying gold is that it means you no longer enjoy playing that part of the game. That's certainly reasonable in extreme cases, and when gold farmers have inflated prices (which they've basically done everywhere). However, it makes whatever you buy with that gold feel a little less valuable. Take epic mounts for example, back when it wasn't possible to buy gold yet (like in the first 6 months or so of WoW). The sight of an epic mount was pretty cool at that time, and was a major status symbol. Now it's virtually meaningless, because probably three quarters of the population bought theirs with RMT gold.

Sure, I never got an epic mount because I never bought gold, but when I finally managed to get a Robe of the Archmage (http://www.thottbot.com/?i=26850) by farming myself, I felt an enormous sense of accomplishment. And I worked to make sure I had some fun farming. If not, I usually took a break.

Also:
"And you can't just see the possible negative effect in isolation. Everything has a possible negative effect, but it has to be seen in context with the possible positive effect."

Perhaps you could give a good example, since I keep thinking that one person buying gold doesn't seem to have a positive effect except for himself, whereas I can think of several negative effects that affect many other people.
 

Great discussion here, on this tired ground, without the usual flames (of which I have been guilty).

After reading all this, it seems, in my opinion, that, like the trade in illegal drugs, buying gold does indeed harm the overall structure of the economy.
 

It's Friday and I'm too tired to type, so I'll just state that I agree with Tobold and Nick.
 

Too late in the day to comment on this either. I will admit that I come down against RMT and cheating as wrong in general but this is because of sportsmanship (sportspersonship if we're being PC) and not because of a moral standing. I just can't be bothered to go into the whys and wherefores right now (although I have touched upon it before in my own blog).
 

They could fix the problem with RMT on WoW by offering a game that is geared towards the north american audience. Some subtle differences could be

1.) make a pvp server, quests give 25x exp/25x gold. And have all the tiered pvp gear available at npcs and disable the raids, and replace them with more intrique and unique pvp arenas/battlegrounds.

2.) Make a WoW server lineup that does not allow mail or trades (exception being enchanting, water/buff type items, items with no NPC trade value), and server controlled prices for items (ie, no auction house and better prices from NPC for selling your wares). And put into effect a better time/reward ratio for this type of server to keep ppl interested in keeping value into their chars. For example more than 2 proffessions per class, a more challenging heirarchy ranking for endgame (like a 15 teir ranking system based on your combined successrate in raids and arenas) and give unique rwards to each ranking... (top ranking gets special access to customziation on gear (like color, spikes, etc).