Real money trade

[Crush]

Hello players

Recently there was a post on the market forum where someone offered to buy ingame money for US$ paid via Paypal. This wasn't the first time someone offered to buy or sell ingame achievements for real money.

How should, in your opinion, the TMW committee deal with this?

To give some context:
In many commercial MMO games, this is explicitly forbidden. The terms of use for World of Warcraft, for example, read:

Blizzard does not recognize any purported transfers of virtual property executed outside of the Game, or the purported sale, gift or trade in the “real world” of anything that appears or originates in the Game. Accordingly, you may not sell in-game items or currency for “real” money, or exchange those items or currency for value outside of the Game.

(source: http://us.blizzard.com/en-us/company/legal/wow_tou.html).

Most other commercial MMORPGs have similar clauses in their game rules. Like Runes of Magic:

7.4 The user may under no circumstances
[...]
c) use virtual objects used in the online games outside of online games, buy or sell them for "real" money, swap them or cause such activities.

This also includes all evasions, similar actions or actions that correspond in their effect to the aforementioned bans.

(source: http://agbserver.frogster-online.com/en ... Magic.html)

But there are also counter-examples, like Second Life, which actively support it by offering a convertible ingame currency.

So what do you think about this?

Note that this poll is just to estimate the general opinion. I have created it on my own behalf, not as a committee member. Its result is not binding.

[Big Crunch]

I voted to ignore it. Essentially there are no safeguards in place to protect either party. That said, I dont see anything wrong with it, and I dont think the exchange rate that was discussed will prove to be good enough to make up for the time used to gather the money.

BC

[veryape]

What people does with their own stuff is none of my business, if they want to sell an account/charachter that they have put in the effort to level they sure should be free to sell it imo.

However I do not like it personally and would never do it. But ultimately it is in my view anyones own decision what to do with their account..

However I think that this is something they should have to work out for themselves without the involvement of the gms. They already have important work to do..

So my stance is "no support for it, no ruling against it"..

[Delasia]

I voted to ignore:

Buyer be wary.......
The reality is....there is absolutely no way to track this type of transaction.
In game it will look merely like a gift exchange.

I do not believe there is any advantage to having more money or more hats in game, so I dont believe game play would be adversely affected.

Mana is not a pay to play game, so there are no financial hardships created or money is not coming from the corporate coffers.

I would suggest, that a disclaimer be put down so the devs and gm's dont get flooded with scam complaints.

Suggestion:
Any transactions that involve "outsider" trading; ie paypal ect are not subject to committe action or intervention. Buyer/traders beware.

My two cents (oh wait Canada doesn't do pennies anymore)
My nickel worth.

Cheers
Delasia

[Ablu]

I am fine with ignoring it as long it are items or money that was achieved in the game and not created using some commands / bugs.

However i would be against tolerating people who stand in the town and spam "BUY GP FOR REAL MONEY HERE!!!!"

Regards
Ablu

[Big Crunch]

However i would be against tolerating people who stand in the town and spam "BUY GP FOR REAL MONEY HERE!!!!"

Regards
Ablu

So would I

[blackrazor]

I voted to oppose. Players already have reasonable limits placed upon the use of their characters, so there is ample precedence, and I see this as more of the same.

I feel that making the game for-profit in any way (whether for-profit to specific players or for-profit to the administration) will eventually make it a freemium experience, encourage botting (you think bots can be bad now? wait until there is a financial incentive to do it!), and just overall degrade the quality and type of experience that TMW was originally meant to be.

[sonsofbeaches]

In my honest opinion this should be strictly forbidden. Only abuse can come out of this and if this is tolerated people will evenutally claim "I paid for this and that and he did not give me the item so now get me my 50$ back!!!"

This is just way too dangerous to ignore.

[Lota]

I'm personnaly against. But I in my opinion this business will exist even if it's forbidden. But if people begin to make reclame in private or in public, and if I ask a guy lvl 20 about were he found his warlord armor or his sorcerer's robe, and he answer that he has paid only **,**$ to that other guy... TMW has a great community and a great ambience, but it would ruin it. That's why it should be forbidden.

And that's exactly the same thing on the forum.

[SudoPlatypus]

.

[Frost]

I find the idea of introducing real money to be personally distasteful.
However, I don't see how TMW could reasonably enforce a rule against it, except to prohibit advertising such things in the forums and in the game.

Recently, someone complained that another player had "hacked" his account. To make a long story short, it was proven that the accused person had indeed emptied that account, but he claimed he had permission of the owner. Later, the accuser said his computer had been taken over by the accused. The accused said he had paid real money for the account, and the person who sold it was now trying to cheat on the deal.

To anyone who would pay real money for things, I suggest you consider how little protection you have, even after receiving what you paid for.

I wrote this purely as a player with some inside knowledge of a certain event (which was also discussed in these forums).

[blackrazor]

Frost, your excellent example proves how someone could get banned for it already, ironically, only if they were scammed by the seller (and the seller could walk away free).

1. Seller sells account on E-bay.

2. Buyer buys account with real money and claims it.

3. Seller has already used @email, reneges on the deal, claims it never happened, get the buyer banned for account stealing and walks away scot-free and richer.

4. Not good.

You could always say "buyer beware", and I would certainly agree. But I would also add that it hurts the game to allow this to happen.

[o11c]

Does a rule need to be completely enforceable to be a rule? I voted to oppose.

The practical difference between "Oppose" and "Ignore" is that we can shut down forum threads on the subject, and tell anyone who inevitably gets scammed "you deserve it" (I am of that opinion for existing ways of scamming anyway).

Also, (for the case of account trading) our password-reset options are based on the original registration. This would take away the difficult position of figuring out who is "right", and allow us to just ban everybody.

[borgomatic]

This has been done in other games and some of them were against the law in the country of operation. This can result in legal charges against the game operators for tax evasion reasons, or for failing to register as a company. I don't know how Germany looks at such things, but with all the current drama over the change of server location it could become a way an angry player could attack it's current operators. He could just pose as one of these people engaging in a commercial transaction then send a complaint to the law enforcement claiming they were cheated. It would probably fail in court, but who wants to go there in the first place?

(BTW I voted against.)

[DefinitelyNOTMrWho]

I vote support it. Rich people shouldn't waste their time killing stuff to get drops, that is for the poor slaves.

I also think we should have like a slave sale and people with money can buy a bunch of poor noobs to work for them. I would buy about 4 people and pay them with an agreed ammount per month. Their task would be to gather items for their master.

Giving the recent turn of events and the overthrowing of Platyna I would say this proposal is the next big step to take.