Should Runes of Magic Sell Gold?

There are a number of big problems with developers entering the business of selling in-game currency for real money.  However, based on the specific history and current circumstances in Runes of Magic, I'm not convinced that this outcome would be worse than the status quo. 

Money Laundering and your Local Auction House

ROM was designed with the intent that players would be able to purchase the cash store Diamond currency using in-game gold.  The auction house still has a category for this currently unavailable functionality.

The theory is that this type of model allows the developers to monetize players who are not willing to spend any of their own real money on the game.  From the developers' perspective, it doesn't matter if I spend $10 on a horse or if someone else spends $10 on diamonds that I buy off them for gold and then use to buy the horse.  There are a variety of potential drawbacks to this design decision, but the real problem that seems to have killed this feature is outright fraud. 

For an illicit gold seller, this system offers a perfect opportunity.

1. Use stolen credit card numbers (perhaps from former customers) to make an unauthorized diamond purchase from the game.
2. Sell diamonds on the AH for gold.
3. Offer to sell the gold for real money at rates that are significantly better than the diamond -> AH rate.

The gold seller does not care if/when the owner of the original stolen card contests the charges, because it's not their money.  Their cut comes from the customer in step 3, who has no reason to contest the charges because they actually received the gold they paid for.  Meanwhile, the "stolen" diamonds are in the hands of a player who had no way of knowing that they were stolen, as they were posted on the legitimate in-game auction house.  If the gold buyer has spent the gold already, there are even more innocent third parties in the loop.  In the end, the developers lose money from chargeback fees, support time, and whatever they ultimately decide to do about the illicit currency. 

Passing the buck
Under the circumstances, you might figure that the logical solution would be to cut off the diamond trade entirely.  Unfortunately, ROM's developers were apparently counting on this revenue stream, and are unwilling to consider this approach. 

As a result, newly purchased diamonds that were paid for using online payment methods cannot be traded to other players (or at least cannot be traded for some amount of time, to ensure that any protests are resolved).  Diamonds purchased through any sort of gift card program, where the retailer rather than the game's developers eats the losses if the charges prove to be fraudulent, can still be transferred to other players, but NOT via the in-game auction house.  

This means that players must engage in completely insecure trades with other players, with no way of verifying that the other player has what they're promising to pay.  It's not entirely clear from my vantage point as a player whether customer service will intervene when these types of deals go bad.  Either way, the developers can't plausibly feign ignorance, as people looking to buy or sell diamonds/gold are constantly posting this in the global chat.  More to the point, the devs don't WANT to lock down this trade, because they're counting on the revenue. 

Will official gold trading solve the problem?
There's a rumor on the US forums (the developers and their official forums are in Germany) that the long term solution to this problem may involve the introduction of an NPC who sells gold for diamonds at some fixed rate.  The developers have also already locked down the use of in-game mail to send gold to other players.  Given the history of these things, it's not entirely clear that these steps will actually manage to eradicate the gold trade, but let's assume for the sake of argument that they do succeed.  Will this be a good thing? 

The effects on the economy are going to be a bit hard to predict.  On the one hand, this move might cause inflation, as new gold would be introduced to the economy when players purchase it in this way.  However, the current system also drives inflation in some ways, if players are currently willing to farm monsters to get gold to trade to players for diamonds.  In any case, as nearly as I can tell, the developers' WANT inflation, as this would leave more players feeling that they need to purchase gold. 

There's also a potential market among spendthrifts like myself, who CAN afford to pay for diamonds but CHOOSE not to when offered the option of handing over virtual gold instead. Meanwhile, I would speculate that the developers get less of the revenue from gift card sales compared to straight up credit card purchases, as there are more third parties involved (the gift card issuer, and a cut for the retailer).  So, the effects on revenue are not clearcut. 

On the other hand, the effects on transaction security for legitimate players would be dramatic.  Players who want to obtain gold would not have to worry about finding a legitimate buyer for their diamonds.  This change would most likely remove the ability to "gift" diamonds (realistically, I doubt that very many of these transactions are genuinely altruistic gifts without any form of compensation or scam involved), but at least then it would be official that there is no safe way to obtain diamonds without paying real money. 

In the end, the developers have made a decision that they want to take money from players who are intending to convert diamonds into gold.  In my view, this creates a responsibility to safeguard those transactions that trumps any other ill effects that official gold selling would have on the game. 

Fixing LOTRO F2P By Sept 10

The LOTRO Free to Play Beta seems to have been winding down for a bit now - all of the major features are in the game, and the patch notes have been getting progressively shorter.  Yesterday came the big unveil - new players can no longer sign up for LOTRO's free trial program because the free to play revamp launches September 10th. 

Store In Need of Polish
Though there is still nearly a month's worth of beta left, the LOTRO store in particular looks like it could use some work.  There are bugs, such as players not receiving purchased items, which are being worked on and should be fixed by launch.  Just as concerning, though, are store items that are confusing. 

For example, consider inventory upgrades.

This purchase, for 495 TP, unlocks the fourth inventory bag for non-subscribers.  Subscribers get access to all five of the current bags as part of their subscriptions, but are still allowed to purchase the fourth bagslot because they might eventually go free to play.  Even then, any characters they played while they were subscribers would be grandfathered in for the fourth and fifth bags (this may change later in beta), but any NEW characters would need the fourth bag.

By contrast, this relatively similar looking upgrade - also for 495 TP - increases the amount of space in the player's bank by the same 15 slots as the extra inventory bag would.  There are, however, two big differences.  First, this unlock is PER CHARACTER (note the "Uses: Character" line versus "Uses: Account" for the inventory bag).  This was improved after Beta players left strongly worded feedback that this distinction needs to be clearer, but I think there is still room for confusion.  Second, bank space expansions are the same expansions that are currently purchasable with in-game gold, and will remain purchasable under free to play.  Players who think that they must pay real money to unlock this feature and later find out that this was not necessary may wish they'd spent their TP on other things.

This type of issue is not unique to inventory bags.  For example, you can purchase the two Moria expansion classes separately from the expansion, but the expansion is required as the only way to increase your level cap to 60 (and unlock legendary items).  Presumably, there are no refunds for such wasted purchases when you get to level 50 and realize that you MUST pay for the expansion to continue playing the game.   These points of confusion are not some hypothetical question that I'm coming up with because I'm "looking for things to complain about" - the guys at LOTRO Reporter were confused by the bag issue on their recent 50th episode. 

Will all this stuff get fixed in time?  Maybe, maybe not.  Also, as an evolving store, there will always be room for new confusion every time a new item is added.  Either way, I'd advise extreme caution in purchasing things during the early days of free to play.  Turbine's customer service in DDO seems to be relatively good about fixing these sorts of misunderstandings when they happen, but it will save you some time if you let someone else be the guinea pig who finds the issue.

State of the Game

For existing players, my guess is that free to play will be a good thing.  Long-awaited additional content will be added to the game, while the newbie zones will get some updates and polish.  Though there are a few places where Turbine is offering cash store items to decrease excessive grinds in lieu of decreasing the excessive grinds, the fact is that they were not doing anything about these areas anyway.  Subscribers who intend to continue to subscribe can just use their monthly Turbine Point stipend to buy up a few trait potions or whatever, which is a few more trait potions than they would have had while the game stagnated under the old system.

For new players and non-subscribers, though, I feel that the merits of the new model are less clear cut.  Obviously, you get something - the ability to log into your characters, chat with your guildies, etc - where before you had nothing.  On the other hand, Turbine has held back a fair number of things - such as access to all swift travel routes, PVMP, and rested exp for subscribers only, regardless of how much you're willing to pay.  Also, because the game consists of linear quest hubs, players will need to do some creative thinking to determine whether it actually makes sense to buy quest packs rather than renting them via the subscription. 

One final tip for new players (or former players who quit before Moria) is to consider looking for a retail box copy of the Moria expansion (e.g. from online retailers).  As I mentioned above, this expansion is NOT optional, and it is available online for far less than the price the LOTRO store is asking for it.  For under $10, you can obtain the two expansion classes, the level 60 level cap (+ LI's), permanent free access to all the content in Moria (level 50-60 stuff), and two additional character slots (plus two additional slots if you have never previously spent money on the game for the one-time upgrade from "free" to "premium").  You may also get a month of subscription access included (which will net you 500 Turbine Points if you wait for the F2P launch) for your trouble.

Lacking Replay Incentives

Runes of Magic provides players with "free samples" of a variety of cash shop items, including "marking ink" (can be used to mark any location) and "transport runes" (used to teleport to these locations at a later date).  As you can see, I've been using the inks (which are also available cheaply via daily quest tokens) to mark the major cities in the game as I reach each one.  I have yet to actually use a rune to teleport to any of these locations.

Though the game does provide alternatives - a hearthstone equivalent and an NPC teleport service - the main reason why I'm still sitting on all of my runes is that it is very rare that I ever feel I *need* to backtrack.  I travel to a quest area, I complete all the local quests (or maybe all but one or two group quests that I will come back to solo at some higher level), and I leave. 

Why Backtrack?
This particular feature of games is by no means unique to ROM - the unused teleport runes just happen to be an especially noticeable way of keeping "score" to show just how little use I have had for worldwide travel on a scale that most games do not offer.

Pretty much every game offers some reason to go back to quests that you have yet to complete (assuming that there actually are enough quests that you have extras left over, which looks like it will no longer be true of ROM by the 30's).  In ROM the reason is experience for your second class, while WoW has its achievements, EQ2 has AA's, LOTRO has deeds, and DDO has favor.  Once you've completed the quests once, though, it's usually only a small subset of repeatable endgame content that actually provides any real push to return.

(DDO is an exception because literally all of its content can be repeated on higher difficulties for additional favor - in my view, this aspect of the game is part of what makes the purchase of adventure packs feel more compelling than even larger amounts of content sold in paid expansions for other games.)

The world behind
This aspect of vertical advancement - complete one zone and move on - is creating some of the genre's biggest challenges these days.  It is very challenging for developers to provide any kind of group leveling path because the inexorable upward movement of the player population means that there won't be anyone left at the lower levels to group with.  It is challenging for atmosphere, as supposedly remote areas are overrun on expansion launch day and populous towns are deserted a year later.  This approach is also clearly taxing development budgets, as it calls for more and more content at a faster rate than even the largest studios can sustain.

At the end of the day, perhaps the main solution will have to be providing compelling differences in gameplay (either revised quests or compelling class choices for alts) in the hopes that players will re-roll.  It will be very interesting to see what Cataclysm - with possibly the largest scale revamp of a leveling game ever to hit an MMO - does to WoW's demographics.  Will longtime players re-roll, zoom through at 85 for achievements, or just wonder why this feels like a shorter expansion than some?  That said, it wouldn't be all bad to have some reason to revisit locations in the world beyond the occasional Fed-ex quest.

EQ2 F2P And Taunt Skill

This week's episode of A View From The Top reminded me of a seemingly short-sighted change that SOE announced for EQ2 a few months back.  Low level characters will no longer receive certain group-focused skills - such as taunts/detaunts - automatically upon hitting the appropriate level.  Looking back, the upcoming shift to free to play appears to be part of the context of this seemingly short-sighted decision. 

The value of the solo taunt
Currently, low level fighters (tanking-capable classes) are designed to include taunts as part of their normal attack rotation, even when playing solo.  The taunt completes a combo called a "heroic opportunity" that does some damage.  With the changes, the taunts will be removed from the combo (since players will no longer have the spells on their hotbar) and existing damage attacks will be updated to take their place.  In principle, this change makes sense - why would anyone want to taunt a mob when they're the only player on the mob's aggro list? 

First off, EQ2 combat skills all have cooldowns of at least 10 seconds, with some skills locked out for 30 seconds or more after use.  Because you start off with a small number of skills, it's all-too-easy to end up sitting for 10 seconds watching your character autoattack because you don't have anything better to do.  The taunt button is literally something extra that you can do to fill that time, even if it does sound kind of pointless.  With the changes, your heroic opportunity combo will automagically complete itself using damage attacks that you were going to do anyway, and you'll just have less to do.

Second, and a bit more problematic, is EQ2's continued use of casting skills to determine whether abilities hit.  This outdated mechanic is neither challenging nor interesting - as long as the game provides you with the tools to advance your skill level, it will automatically find itself at the cap for any given level.  The occasional taunt to complete a heroic opportunity is currently enough to keep a character's "aggression" skill (only used for taunts) at its maximum level. 

With the change, EVEN AFTER the player eventually gets their taunt skills (at a higher level than in the current game), they will have no reason to ever use them.  Soon enough, players will be hitting level 90 with an aggression skill rating of 5/450, which they'll have to fix by spending a few hours taunting a target dummy since it won't be possible to group with non-functional taunts.  I'm sure that players who discover this will be ever so grateful that SOE spared them the bother of pushing an extra button back at level 8.

Diverging demographics
When the taunt change was original announced, more than a month prior to the unveiling of the free to play model, it seemed shortsighted.  Knowing what we know now, it makes a lot more sense.  The game's producer claims that the new service is aimed at a different playerbase from the existing audience, and he appears to be backing that view up with his actions. 

Having a nonexistent taunt skill is a problem if you figure that your new player is eventually supposed to go on and tank instances.  By contrast, being gimped at tanking group content doesn't matter if the player never tries to tank a dungeon because the various restrictions on their free account will keep them out of instances in the first place. 

The catch is that, under SOE's plan to run the same game using two different payment models, changes like this affect both versions simultaneously.  This particular change is more of an annoyance than a game-breaker, but it could well be a harbinger of more problematic conflicts between the two systems in months to come.